tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-101586822023-09-17T09:35:21.292-05:00Random thoughts from an independent Consultant specialized in Java development and Eclipse plugins.Frank Sauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01325013035599484238noreply@blogger.comBlogger36125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1124729318784383312005-08-22T11:29:00.000-05:002005-10-06T21:24:19.883-05:00

The current issue of JDJ has a feature article titled "AOP Technology Update" by Patrick Fendt that in the very first paragraph gives me "credit" for copyrighting the phrase "third dimension of programming". I think that must have been pulled from a powerpoint presentation I did back in 2001, but I was misquoted (and I certainly did not copyright anything). What I did say in there is "A

Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1120847563248280582005-07-08T13:26:00.000-05:002005-07-08T13:32:43.253-05:00

I just released the new 1.3.6 version of the metrics plugin for use with eclipse 3.1. Use the update site at http://metrics.sourceforge.net/update, or download it from the project page and install from a local update site. Other than adjusting to the new 3.1 apis, in this version several major and minor bugs were fixed. Note that the dependency view will still not work on the Mac because AWT and

Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1120248556132884702005-07-01T15:07:00.000-05:002005-07-01T15:09:58.613-05:00

This just in: The Eclipse Voice Tools Project on the voicexmlreview website. This article pretty much describes what I was talking about in my previous entry.

Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1120144574096863662005-06-30T10:07:00.000-05:002005-06-30T12:43:13.066-05:00

If anybody is hiring eclipse plug-in developers. I'm available... I just learned that my current contract at IBM had to be prematurely ended for budget reasons :-(For samples of my work, see metrics and the Eclipse VTP project. Here's the blurb from my resume on what I did for the VTP project: "Developed Eclipse plug-ins for the IBM Voice toolkit, a development toolkit for VoiceXML applications

Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1120070851473783222005-06-29T13:47:00.000-05:002005-06-29T13:47:31.483-05:00

I've been looking at the downloads counter on the Eclipse Downloads page for a while now, and at this rate, I'm going to go broke! (For the reason, see the challenge page) But it's for an excellent cause, so I don't mind :-) On a related note, it took me several attempts to download 3.1 for Mac OSX, did those all count? Is the counter transactional? Just wondering....

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01325013035599484238noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1118843931230956992005-06-15T08:58:00.000-05:002005-06-15T08:58:51.246-05:00

Holy smokes! I could not believe how fast RC2 starts up! Whatever you guys are doing to the platform, keep doing it :-) If you don't have RC2 yet, get it at Eclipse Downloads.

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01325013035599484238noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1115998906956641532005-05-13T10:41:00.000-05:002005-05-13T10:47:23.526-05:00

This is hilarious: madbean's Totally Gridbag!Even though I'm probably one of the dozen or so java programmers who used to actually like the Gridbag layout... One of those things that once you get the hang of it, it's pretty powerful, and I used it all the time (much to the dismay of my fellow programmers, one of whom I married :-). I agree that at first it is way too complex though, and I much

Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1115746752853258652005-05-10T12:39:00.000-05:002005-05-10T12:41:51.693-05:00

Enter The JBoss Matrix: "lacking in community support (Less than 100 posts in 7 months of existence compared to 3,000 per month on the JBoss forums- http://www.gluecode.com/forums/index.jspa). Geronimo is obviously not J2EE certified. It is obviously low-end. It obviously is not tracking the EJB3 spec. Gluecode has written far less code (for example, in Q4 of last year Geronimo had 800 total new

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01325013035599484238noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1114013566368050992005-04-20T11:04:00.000-05:002005-04-20T11:12:46.370-05:00

I'm running into the weirdest plugin issue I've ever encountered so far while developing eclipse plugins. Here is the scenario - for the moment it does not even matter what this plugin does:a plugin is installed the usual way, and we start eclipse with a new workspace. In this workspace, the plugin in question shows faulty behavior. Now, use PDE to start a runtime workbench from the instance

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01325013035599484238noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1113604132693552752005-04-15T17:21:00.000-05:002005-04-15T17:28:52.696-05:00

Sorry for this off topic post, but I have to vent some steam since this has me totally pissed off. I was shopping around for better health insurance - which for an independent consultant isn't easy - and tried Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, since I liked their Blue Options plan. Being the honest person that I am, I mentioned a recent (12/04) "problem" I saw a doctor for (which I almost never

Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1112726872414805612005-04-05T13:47:00.000-05:002005-04-05T13:47:52.413-05:00

You can add my metrics plugin to this list of (partially) broken plugins on OSX. The dependency graph view uses the (or attempts to anyways) AWT_SWT bridge, which for reasons stated in this bug report does not work. I am in the process of porting the touchgraph library I use here to pure SWT and Draw2D, but progress is slow... :-( Eclipse On MacOS X : Broken - Another SWT-Related Story (

Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1112146459672397072005-03-29T20:00:00.000-05:002005-03-30T00:11:33.696-05:00

This seems to be a frequently asked question on the newsgroups (another instance popped up today in the platform group) so I decided to document this in pattern form. I use this pattern all the time myself and it occurs many times in eclipse itself, so it definitely qualifies as a pattern. Please don't beat me up on the pattern form, I'm doing this from the top of my head and in a hurry...

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01325013035599484238noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1111120098717840512005-03-17T23:16:00.000-05:002005-03-17T23:28:18.716-05:00

Is that even a word? Ivar Jacobson seems to think so, and that's good enough for me. I just received my latest purchase from Amazon, titled "Aspect-oriented Software Development with Use Cases" by Ivar Jacobson and Pan-Wei Ng, and to my surprise, on page 13 is a diagram of the Eclipse architecture! In short, an Existion has extension points, into which extensions contribute. What's even more

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01325013035599484238noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1110392284345309812005-03-09T13:18:00.000-05:002005-03-09T13:18:04.346-05:00

Still have to read it, but AOP@Work: AOP and metadata: A perfect match, Part 1 looks to be a very interesting article!

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01325013035599484238noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1109797612026159562005-03-02T16:06:00.000-05:002005-03-02T16:06:52.026-05:00

The seeds for a Calculus of Procrastination can be found here: ideasasylum ::Jamie's Weblog: The Distraction Operator I love it! Very cool :-)

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01325013035599484238noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1109344834751762482005-02-25T10:20:00.000-05:002005-03-02T16:08:41.740-05:00

Very cool: Kirill Grouchnikov's Blog: How to create your own icons

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01325013035599484238noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1109271579300297472005-02-24T13:55:00.000-05:002005-02-24T13:59:39.300-05:00

I am currently writing online help for a set of Eclipse plugins and find that the whole TOC and F1-help context setup can get quite complex! Why is there no help authoring plugins for eclipse? If anybody knows of one, please let me know! While on this topic, what is a good DocBook authoring tool?

Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1109268669789908932005-02-24T13:11:00.000-05:002005-02-24T13:14:08.206-05:00

TiVo shares jump on Apple speculation | CNET News.comNow that would be cool! I just got a Mac mini with the sole purpose of it becoming the media hub in our family room. Moved all iTunes and iPhoto content to it and started to research the possibilities of recording TV with it too, making my TiVo box obsolete. Hook it all up to an Optoma H30 HDTV projector or something similar or better, and that

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01325013035599484238noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1109261400798203752005-02-24T11:10:00.000-05:002005-02-24T11:10:00.796-05:00

Take the AspectWerkz to AspectJ 5 Survey

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01325013035599484238noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1109110202029649092005-02-22T17:10:00.000-05:002005-02-22T17:14:25.023-05:00

Do I dare ask what the monkey on this book cover is doing? :-) I guess it's related to the hands-on aspect of this book...

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01325013035599484238noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1108756973298446252005-02-18T15:02:00.000-05:002005-02-18T15:17:11.683-05:00

I wish it was true: onEclipse - Eclipse 3.1 M5 Released! but I can't seem to find it anywhere yet... And when I checked this morning, the integration build was broken :-(

Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1108327201631576852005-02-13T14:51:00.000-05:002005-03-29T09:11:35.133-05:00

In my recent effort to create a search for unused property names, I had the need for a file dialog allowing a user to specify a properties file. However, I wanted the dialog to restrict its view to the workspace and to my surprise I could not find a built-in dialog that does that! The SWT FileDialog offers up the entire filesystem and knows nothing about the Eclipse workspace, and the

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01325013035599484238noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1108323990895010472005-02-13T14:12:00.000-05:002005-02-15T16:19:07.220-05:00

In the previous post I mentioned that the Eclipse NLS keys search page does exactly what I was looking for, but it turns out I was not exactly correct there. NLS Keys tries to be a little too smart, and really ties in to the "Externalize Strings" refactoring feature of Eclipse. It does not simply look for uses of the property names, but performs a search for uses of the accessor class using the

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01325013035599484238noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1107878587324625172005-02-08T10:55:00.000-05:002005-02-08T11:03:07.323-05:00

After spending the superbowl weekend writing a plugin to find unused properties in a properties file, I just found out that this feature already exists but is hidden quite efficiently... If you open the search dialog and hit the customize button, you'll see a dialog with one unchecked search page, named 'NLS Keys'. This page does exactly what I was trying to write a new plugin for last weekend...

Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10158682.post-1107275706629119872005-02-01T11:35:00.000-05:002005-02-01T11:40:14.023-05:00

A new pattern repository in Wiki form :Pattern Share This site collects all patterns from GOF, Fowler, Woolf and many others. Very cool!

Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com