More Features, Less Code The EDIT Taxonomic Editor and Eclipse Rich Client Platform Pepe Ciardelli...

More Features, Less Code

The EDIT Taxonomic Editor and Eclipse Rich Client Platform

Pepe CiardelliBotanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem

Dept. of Biodiversity Informatics and Laboratories

TDWG 2009 Annual ConferenceNovember 11, 2009


DON’T BREAK THE FLOW

The holy grail

EDIT Desktop Taxonomic Editor



Avoiding flow impedance

1.Give me seamless access to existing data

2.Don’t force me to worry about underlying data structures

3.Don’t ask me if I’m sure

4.Don’t clutter my space



Choosing the technology

• Started life as IBM VisualAge IDE

• Eclipse open source project started in 2001, Eclipse Foundation founded in 2004

• Last major release: 170 corporate members, 33 projects

• Plug-ins run in Eclipse runtime environment

• New releases don’t break old plug-ins

Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP)



Java development with Eclipse …



… taxonomic editing with Eclipse



✓Seamless access to existing data



✓Ignore underlying data structures



✓Don’t ask me if I’m sure

“ü” causes parsing error

Mouse over for explanation



✓Reduce clutter



Other Eclipse goodies

• State maintained between sessions

• Undo

• Update mechanism

• Perspectives a.k.a. move stuff around

• Extensibility – Bulk Editor, plug-in to manage images?



Eclipse as teacher

• Observe my own workflow, implement time-savers

• Best practices in UI design

• Design patterns

• Open-source community



The future of the Taxonomic Editor

Integrate more Eclipse goodies



The future of the Taxonomic Editor

• User feedback

• More features, less code!

• Knowledge sharing among institutions

• Plug-in development

EDIT User WorkshopThursday, 14:00, Joffre B

More Features, Less Code The EDIT Taxonomic Editor and Eclipse Rich Client Platform Pepe Ciardelli...

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