Eclipse DemoCamp Berlin

See Cool Stuff, Meet Interesting People

The Java User Group Berlin Brandenburg is organizing the Eclipse DemoCamp Berlin on December 19 at Coffee Karma newthinking store.

The goal of the DemoCamps is to organize local events where individuals can show off the interesting things they are doing with Eclipse and also have an opportunity to meet other Eclipse users.

I’ll present our utility asset management software CUBIS POLIS which is based on the Eclipse RCP.

If you plan on attending please add your name on the wiki page where you can find all other information regarding this event: http://wiki.eclipse.org/Berlin_DemoCamp.

Equinox as a Service

… “Bug 176928″

No doubt about it, Equinox has high potentials for server-side use. Therefore the question arises: what would be a convenient way to run Equinox applications as a service on Windows platforms (just like Tomcat does)?

On the one hand, we’ve got the Tanuki service wrapper as a weapon of choice to run java apps as a Windows Service or Unix Daemon. And on the other hand?

I don’t drink coffee I take tea my dear …

I wonder how an Eclipse RCP application can be embedded into a .NET window. Someone from the RCP newsgroup gave me the advice to try out windows FindWindow and SetParent functions – wich leads me to this C# example.

Here is the conclusion:

In the C# application one can acquire the handle of the RCP application and set the windows parent to some control handle from the C# application.

...
wHandle = FindWindow (null, "RCP Product");
groupBoxHandle = this.groupBox1.Handle;
setParent (wHandle, groupBoxHandle);
int style = GetWindowLong(wHandle, GWL_STYLE);
SetWindowPos(wHandle, groupBoxHandle, 0, 0,
    this.groupBox1.Bounds.Width-20,
    this.groupBox1.Bounds.Height-20,
    SWP_NOZORDER | SWP_NOMOVE | SWP_DRAWFRAME );
MoveWindow(wHandle,5,20,
    this.groupBox1.Bounds.Width-8,
    this.groupBox1.Bounds.Height-25,
    true);
...

It’ll be nice too, to delegate resize events to the RCP’s window.

void resized(object sender, System.EventArgs e) {
    MoveWindow(wHandle,5,20,
        this.groupBox1.Bounds.Width-8,
        this.groupBox1.Bounds.Height-25,
        true);
}

The RCP application can be started as stripped window without title bar etc. Just set a new shell style at the WorkbenchWindowAdvisor’s method preWindowOpen:

configurer.setShellStyle(SWT.APPLICATION_MODAL);

The following screenshot shows the RCP mail sample application within a .NET window.

Of course this will not solve any interoperability issues but will offer an interesting option for RCP integration.