************************************* * * * DB/C Newsletter * * February 2002 * * * ************************************* News and Comments As of the end of February, there are about 80 people subscribed to the dbctalk email list. The volume of messages has decreased to just one or two messages per day. The quality of the messages and responses has been good, better than my initial expectations. My skepticism was based on experiences I've had with other mailing lists where the amount of noise (dumb and off-topic messages) is much higher. One more pitch: if you've never used an email list before, you should try dbctalk. See the December 2001 newsletter for how to subscribe and participate. This month's article is about Eclipse - an open source, integrated development environment (IDE) platform that was made public by IBM late last year. We are in the initial design and coding stage of creating a replacement for FDE that is part of DB/C DX. This as yet unnamed replacement of FDE will be based on Eclipse. You will be hearing more about our progress on this project during the next few months. don.wills@dbcsoftware.com ****************************************************************************** Eclipse Eclipse is an IDE that was developed by Object Technology International (www.oti.com). OTI is owned by IBM. Here is a paragraph from the OTI web site that describes the company: "OTI is known for its lead role in the design and development of IBM's IDEs for Java, Smalltalk and embedded systems. More recently, we have led in developing Eclipse, the open source, next-generation IBM application development tools platform, and WebSphere Studio Workbench, the IBM supported version of Eclipse technology." OTI developed IBM's Visual Age IDE, which is a highly acclaimed software development tool that has been around for several years. The roots of Visual Age come from Smalltalk, which was the first object oriented programming language to find general acceptance. In addition, Smalltalk was one of the first languages where the development environment was integral to creating programs in the language. In a sense, Eclipse is the next generation in the Visual Age family of IDEs. The first sentence in the Eclipse Platform Technical Overview is this: "The Eclipse Platform is an IDE for anything, and for nothing in particular." Platform is one of those words that the computer industry has adopted and used to the point where its meaning is fuzzy. In the context of Eclipse, the 'platform' is the framework for an IDE. Just as the framework of a house can't be lived in, the Eclipse framework is incomplete by itself. One or more Development Toolkits are needed to make Eclipse be useful. There are two Development Toolkits currently available for Eclipse: the Java Development Toolkit (JDT) and the C/C++ Development Toolkit (CDT). JDT and CDT make it possible to do program development and testing in Java, C and C++ using Eclipse. From the user's point of view, the Eclipse framework consists of an executable program that looks generally like other IDEs - it is a GUI program with menus, toolbars, editors, etc. However, the richness of the framework allows quite sophisticated tools to be easily developed and added to Eclipse. A primary concept of Eclipse is a resource. A basic resource in Eclipse is a text file that contains source statements for a programming language. Eclipse allows for various views of these source files. Eclipse also allows for various editors to operate on these files. For example, a program that contains GUI features (like the PREP RESOURCE statement of the DB/C language) may be edited with a text editor, or with a graphical editor (like in FDE), or with both at the same time. Additional features are added to Eclipse as plug-ins. One of the language neutral plug-ins that is available now is a sophisticated interface with CVS. CVS is the most widely used source code control system. It comes preinstalled on most UNIX-based systems and is available for all versions of Windows. See www.cvshome.org for more information about CVS. Eclipse, its plug-ins, and its development toolkits are all written in Java. This means that Eclipse is portable. Eclipse is available today for many operating systems including LINUX and Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP. The designers of Eclipse understood that the GUI aspects of Java are not its strengths. There are two GUI toolkits that are part of standard Java as defined by Sun - AWT and Swing. Unfortunately, when running under Windows, Java GUI programs written with AWT or Swing exhibit various inadequacies. As the success of Eclipse depends on its acceptance by Windows programmers, a better solution was necessary. Instead of using AWT or Swing, the designers of Eclipse decided to build a better GUI toolkit. They have accomplished just that - its name is SWT (Standard Widget Toolkit). All of the GUI aspects of Eclipse are written using SWT. SWT's primary feature is that it uses the native operating system GUI API instead of attempting to recreate the GUI in Java as Swing does. This provides for responsiveness and a completely native look and feel. Sun has also attempted to buy/build an IDE platform similar to Eclipse with some success. Sun's open-source IDE platform is named NetBeans. Forte is the product name for the Sun-supported NetBeans-based family of IDEs. Unfortunately, Sun has been quite critical of IBM's development and release of Eclipse. Sun has accused IBM of fracturing the Java community in this area. IBM's response is that they are just trying to build the best IDE so that they can compete with Microsoft's .Net Studio. There is much more to Eclipse than has been described here. To find out more and to download the software, go to the Eclipse web site which is www.eclipse.org. As an aside, IBM has stated that the decision to name their IDE platform Eclipse has no relationship to Sun Microsystems. However, it's hard to believe that the phrase 'eclipse of the sun' didn't at least cross the minds of those at IBM and OTI who named Eclipse. ****************************************************************************** DB/C Class Schedule Class: DB/C DX and JX Language Fundamentals Date: June 2002 Location: Oak Brook, Illinois For information, send email to admin@dbcsoftware.com. ****************************************************************************** Subscribing to the DB/C Newsletter If you don't already have the DB/C Newsletter delivered to your email address and would like to have it emailed to you monthly, just send an email message to 'dbcnews-subscribe@dbcsoftware.com'. 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