Goal/Putpose of Eclipse: Building Commercial-Quality Plug-ins Book.

[somkiat puisungnoen]

What is/are Goal/Purpose of this book ?

and suitable for who ?

[Alexandru Popescu]

Originally posted by somkiat puisungnoen:
What is/are Goal/Purpose of this book ?

and suitable for who ?

Hi somkiat! I think the title is quite descriptive. The book intends to present some professional ways to write Eclipse plugins. It also presents some of the most important APIs avaialable from Eclipse.

./pope

[Eric Clayberg]

What is/are Goal/Purpose of this book ?

This book provides an in-depth description of the process involved in building commercial-quality extensions for the Eclipse. To us, "commercial-quality" is synonymous with "commercial-grade" or "high-quality." Producing a "commercial-quality" plug-in means going above and beyond the minimal requirements needed to integrate with Eclipse. It means attending to all of those details contributing to the "fit and polish" of a commercial offering. Our book is meant to encompass the entire process of plug-in development, including all the extra things that need to be done to achieve high-quality results.

This book has several complementary goals:

o Provide a quick introduction to using Eclipse for new users

o Provide a reference for experienced Eclipse users wishing to expand their knowledge and improve the quality of their Eclipse-based products

o Provide a detailed tutorial on creating sophisticated Eclipse plug-ins suitable for new and experienced users alike

suitable for who ?

The audience for this book includes Java tool developers wishing to build products that integrate with Eclipse and other Eclipse-based products, relatively advanced Eclipse users wishing to customize their environments, or anyone who is curious about what makes Eclipse tick. You do not need to be an expert Eclipse user to make use of this book, as we introduce most of what you need to know to use Eclipse in Chapter 1, "Using Eclipse Tools." While we don�t assume any preexisting Eclipse knowledge, we do expect the reader to be a fairly seasoned developer with a good grasp of Java and at least a cursory knowledge of extensible markup language (XML).

For more information about the book see http://www.qualityeclipse.com. The book web site includes several sample chapters (1-4) which are a great help in getting started with Eclipse and plugin development. The site also includes teh book errata as well as some free tools that you will find useful during plugin development.

[Alexandru Popescu]

How would you (authors) rank the coverage of SWT/JFace in the book?

./pope

[Eric Clayberg]

How would you (authors) rank the coverage of SWT/JFace in the book?

I think it's pretty good, but then I'm biased. Our book is not intended to be a guide to SWT or JFace, but both of those topics are essential to plugin development. As such, we cover everything you need to know in order to use SWT/JFace to build plugins...no more, no less.

After some interesting SWT history, we introduce the important widgets and their relevant APIs as well as the different layout managers. We don't go into any of the complex widgets or topics like creating custom widgets or custom drawing code. For that, I would recommend Steve Northover's book, SWT: The Standard Widget Toolkit.

BTW, our SWT chapter is available for preview at http://www.qualityeclipse.com/book/ch04.pdf
[ September 28, 2004: Message edited by: Eric Clayberg ]

[Alexandru Popescu]

Originally posted by Eric Clayberg:

I think it's pretty good, but then I'm biased.

That's why I've asked ;-). Thanks. And thanks for the link! (just a little remark: you have included the final point in the link, so it may seem broken ).

./pope

[somkiat puisungnoen]

Thank you very much.