SWT

Matthew Scarpino

Stephen Holder

Stanford Ng

Laurent Mihalkovic

MANNING

SWT/JFace

IN ACTION

How to design graphical applications with Eclipse 3.0

SWT/JFace

in Action

MATTHEW SCARPINO

STEPHEN HOLDER

STANFORD NG

AND LAURENT MIHALKOVIC

MANNING

Greenwich

(74° w. long.)

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v

brief contents

1 ■ Overview of SWT and JFace 1

2 ■ Getting started with SWT and JFace 13

3 ■ Widgets: part 1 27

4 ■ Working with events 48

5 ■ More widgets 78

6 ■ Layouts 109

7 ■ Graphics 133

8 ■ Working with trees and lists 167

9 ■ Tables and menus 190

10 ■ Dialogs 212

11 ■ Wizards 234

12 ■ Advanced features 253

13 ■ Looking beyond SWT/JFace: the Rich Client Platform 284

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Licensed to jromero <[email protected]>

vii

contents

preface xv

acknowledgments xvi

about this book xviii

about the authors xxiii

about the title xxiv

about the cover illustration xxv

1 Overview of SWT and JFace 1

1.1 What is SWT/JFace? 2

Building GUIs with SWT 3

Simplifying GUI development with JFace 3

1.2 Looking under the hood 4

The old standby: Swing 4 ■ The newcomer: SWT/JFace 6

The SWT/Swing debate 9

1.3 SWT/JFace: licensing and platform support 9

The Common Public License 9 ■ Platforms supported 9

1.4 The WidgetWindow 11

1.5 Summary 12

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viii CONTENTS

2 Getting started with SWT and JFace 13

2.1 Programming in SWT 14

The HelloSWT program 14 ■ The Display class 16

The Shell class 18

2.2 Programming in SWT/JFace 20

Model-based adapters 20 ■ The HelloSWT_JFace program 21

Coding in JFace and SWT/JFace 23

The ApplicationWindow class 23

2.3 Beginning the WidgetWindow application 24

2.4 Summary 26

3 Widgets: part 1 27

3.1 Introducing the Widget and Control classes 28

Understanding the Widget class 28

Working with Control objects 30

3.2 Labels 32

Styles and separators 33 ■ Label methods 33

3.3 Involving the user with buttons 34

Causing action with push buttons and SWT.PUSH 34

Moving on with arrow buttons and SWT.ARROW 35

Changing state with toggle buttons and

SWT.TOGGLE 35 ■ Choosing with check buttons

and SWT.CHECK 36 ■ Making a single choice with

radio buttons and SWT.RADIO 36

3.4 Containing components with Composites 38

Understanding the Composite class 39 ■ Groups 40

SashForms 43 ■ TabFolders 44

3.5 Updating WidgetWindow 45

Creating the Ch3_Composite class 45

Creating the WidgetWindow TabFolder 46

3.6 Summary 47

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CONTENTS ix

4 Working with events 48

4.1 Event processing in SWT 49

Using typed listeners and events 50 ■ Adapters 54

Keyboard events 55 ■ Customizing event processing with untyped

events 58 ■ An SWT listener/event application 60

4.2 Event processing in JFace 62

Understanding actions and contributions 63 ■ Creating Action

classes 65 ■ Implementing contributions in an

ApplicationWindow 66 ■ Interfacing with contributions 69

Exploring the Action class 70

4.3 Updating the WidgetWindow 74

Building the chapter 4 Composite 74

Adding Ch4_Composite to the WidgetWindow 75

4.4 Summary 77

5 More widgets 78

5.1 Editing text with SWT 79

The basic Text widget 79 ■ The StyledText widget 82

5.2 JFace text support 88

Obtaining the JFace text packages 88 ■ TextViewer and

Document 89 ■ A JFace example 91

5.3 The Combo widget 100

5.4 ToolBarManager 101

ControlContribution 102 ■ Creating toolbars by hand 103

5.5 CoolBar 103

5.6 Slider 105

5.7 ProgressBar 106

5.8 ProgressIndicator 107

5.9 Summary 108

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x CONTENTS

6 Layouts 109

6.1 The fill layout 110

6.2 The row layout 112

Customizing individual layout cells 114

6.3 The grid layout 116

GridData 117

6.4 The form layout 119

Using FormData 120 ■ Specifying relations using

FormAttachment 120 ■ Laying out controls using a form layout 122

6.5 Custom layouts 124

Calculating the layout’s size 125 ■ Laying out the widgets 126

Updating WidgetWindow 128

6.6 Summary 132

7 Graphics 133

7.1 The graphic context 134

Creating a GC object 134 ■ Drawing shapes on a Canvas 136

Painting and PaintEvents 138

Clipping and Canvas styles 139

7.2 Programming with colors 140

Color development with SWT 140

Additional color capability with JFace 144

7.3 Displaying text with fonts 145

Using fonts with SWT 145 ■ Coding with fonts 148

Improved font management with JFace 150

7.4 Incorporating images in graphics 152

Allocating images 152 ■ Coding graphics with images 154

Creating a bitmap with ImageData 155 ■ Manipulating images

with ImageData 159 ■ Managing images with JFace 163

7.5 Updating the WidgetWindow 164

Building the chapter 7 composite 164

Adding Ch7_Composite to the WidgetWindow 165

7.6 Summary 166

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CONTENTS xi

8 Working with trees and lists 167

8.1 Viewers and the Viewer framework 168

Providers 170 ■ Listeners 172 ■ Filters and sorters 173

8.2 Trees 176

SWT trees 176 ■ JFace TreeViewers 177

8.3 Using the List widget 180

SWT lists 180 ■ JFace ListViewers 181

8.4 Updating WidgetWindow 182

8.5 Summary 189

9 Tables and menus 190

9.1 Tables 191

Understanding SWT tables 191 ■ JFace TableViewers 194

9.2 Creating menus 200

Accelerator keys 201 ■ Creating menus in SWT 201

Using JFace actions to add to menus 204

9.3 Updating WidgetWindow 205

9.4 Summary 211

10 Dialogs 212

10.1 SWT dialogs 213

ColorDialog 213 ■ DirectoryDialog 214 ■ FileDialog 215

FontDialog 216 ■ MessageBox 216

10.2 JFace dialogs 218

Message dialogs 219 ■ Error dialogs 220 ■ Input

dialogs 222 ■ Progress monitor dialogs 224

Custom dialogs 228

10.3 Updating WidgetWindow 230

10.4 Summary 233

11 Wizards 234

11.1 Multipage dialogs 236

IDialogPage 236 ■ IWizardPage 237 ■ WizardPage 237

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xii CONTENTS

11.2 The wizard 239

IWizard 239 ■ Wizard 240

11.3 Putting it all together 241

Wizard containers 241 ■ WizardDialog 242

11.4 Combining wizards 243

WizardSelectionPage 243 ■ IWizardNode 244

11.5 Persistent wizard data 244

DialogSettings 245

11.6 Updating WidgetWindow 246

11.7 Summary 252

12 Advanced features 253

12.1 Transferring data 254

The Transfer class 255 ■ Drag-and-drop capability 256

Using the clipboard 261 ■ The filesystem browser 262

12.2 Preferences 268

Preference pages 268 ■ Field editors 270 ■ Preference page

containers 273 ■ Persistent preferences 274

12.3 Label decorators 276

ILabelDecorator 276 ■ DecoratingLabelProvider 277

An example 277

12.4 The Browser widget 280

12.5 Summary 283

13 Looking beyond SWT/JFace: the Rich Client Platform 284

13.1 Understanding RCP workbenches 285

Entering data with editors 285 ■ Displaying information with

views 287 ■ Combining editors and views with perspectives 288

13.2 RCP: Looking under the hood 288

Creating and configuring an RCP project 288 ■ Building the

application class 290 ■ Adding a WorkbenchAdvisor 291

13.3 Adding views and perspectives 294

Building views 294 ■ Arranging workbench windows with a

perspective 295 ■ Executing an RCP application 296

Reviewing the RCP process 297

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CONTENTS xiii

13.4 Populating forms with Eclipse Forms widgets 299

Using FormToolkit and the Eclipse Forms containers 299

Firing text-based events with Hyperlinks 302

13.5 Building a standalone RCP application 306

Exporting RCPExample to an application directory 306

Adding plug-ins to the application directory 307

Executing the application 308

13.6 Summary 308

appendix A Creating projects with SWT/JFace 311

appendix B OLE and ActiveX in SWT/JFace 324

appendix C Changeable GUIs with Draw2D 362

appendix D The Graphical Editing Framework (GEF) 388

index 461

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Licensed to jromero <[email protected]>

xv

preface

We developed this book with one primary goal in mind: to introduce the SWT and

JFace toolsets as simply and as thoroughly as possible. Although the available doc￾umentation covers many aspects of the two libraries, we were disappointed by the

amount (particularly in graphics) that has gone undocumented. So, we came

together in late 2003 to create an approachable book that covers both the high-level

theory and the low-level details of the combined SWT/JFace development tools.

Thanks to the hard work of the folks at eclipse.org, SWT and JFace have

recently received quite a bit of attention and debate within the Java community.

Most of this discussion has focused on the relative merits of Swing as a standard

component of the Java 2 platform, versus SWT as a nonstandard library that uses

native code—an approach foreign to the “write once run anywhere” mantra

embraced by most Java developers. Although Swing has many strengths, we

believe that SWT and JFace together provide a compelling alternative for develop￾ing the user interface of many types of applications.

We wrote this book not only for Swing developers but also for new Java users

who want to build applications that reach beyond the command line. Toward this

end, we present code samples and also do our best to explain the general theories

behind graphical user interface construction. In particular, we’ve gone into great

depth concerning the Model-View-Controller paradigm, which greatly improves

both the reliability and maintainability of graphical applications.

Our goal is to share our SWT experience with you, help you decide if SWT and

JFace make sense for your project, and help you to make effective use of these

technologies.

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