On Canada’s west coast we have been having an unbelievable summer.

While the sunshine (and the beach) have a tendency to lure me away from my computer, there has been so much Eclipse activity this summer  that it’s challenging to get away.  One of the things I’m most excited about is the Google Summer of Code work going on in Zest.  Zest is my small graph widget toolkit.  Up to now it has been something I’ve worked on in the evenings and weekends.  However, this all changed when not one… but two students signed up to work on Zest.

Mateusz Matela, has ventured into the world of Zest layouts.  I wouldn’t ask my worse enemy to look at the layouts, but Mateusz managed to refactor the entire package, removing much of the dead (and error prone code) and he came out with a much cleaner (and simpler) design.  Mateusz even managed to fix some bugs along the way.  For the rest of the summer, Mateusz will be adding some new widgets to our library, allowing you to expand and explore complex graphs.

Fabian Steeg has be working on a GraphViz to Zest transformation toolkit. Using this toolkit you can write GraphViz and generate Zest diagrams.

This is done by using a GraphViz DSL (thanks to the oAW team for this great work) and set of Java Emitting Templates.  Fabian also has full text editor for GraphViz and custom builder that will generate the equivalent Zest code.

Fabian has also been working on the reverse transformation (Zest to GraphViz).

I’m not sure how Zest ended up with two of the best Summer of Code students, but I’m very excited about the future of the project.

Great work guys!

Tags: gef, soc, zest

As everyone should now know, the application process for Google Summer of Code is well underway.  Students are actively putting together their proposals and mentors are busy giving feedback and helping students solidify their ideas.

For those of you who still don’t know what the Google Summer of Code program is, it’s a program put on by Google, in which students are given a stipend to work on open source software.  Eclipse has benefited over the years from great new functionality, exploration of new ideas, and a solid group of students that now understand the Eclipse codebase and processes.

As a former student, I can appreciate how difficult it is to get up-to-speed on an open source project.  Often your good ideas are turned down with statements like “we tried that years ago”, or “that won’t work because of XYZ”.  To help students come up with ideas, many Eclipse enthusiasts have spent sleepless nights putting together our wiki page of ideas.

I’m particularly excited about having somebody extend Zest to include new viewers. Zest is an information visualization toolkit for Eclipse.  Currently it only supports 1 widget, the node-link viewer. I would be great if somebody could contribute new viewers such as Treemaps (nested boxes that can help indicate large areas of a system) or Spacetrees (as you click on nodes, more nodes are presented).  (See the HCIL Lab at Maryland for more great ideas).

It would be really cool to add viewers like this, and then create exemplary tools to demonstrate their use.  For example, we could use a treemap to help locate diskspace issues or a spacetree to help explore p2 repositories.  Browse the wiki, look for ideas, or propose your own.  The deadline is Friday, but if you really want to participate you should have your application in before that.

Tags: soc, zest

I have been working on one of the most requested Zest features, custom figures, and by EclipesCon it will be finished.  Now you are no longer stuck with those little blue rounded rectangles.  You can construct all sorts of custom figures, or even make use of an ImageFigure.

Zest Custom Figure

You can either do this by creating a CGraphNode, or in the viewer by using an IFigureProvider (as your label provider).  Now we can construct some UML Style visualizations using Zest.  Is anybody interested in trying to hook up an SVG parser (I think batik is part of Orbit)?

Want to learn about this and other cool Zest tips and tricks. Come see my talk at EclipseCon.

Tags: eclipse, eclipsecon, zest

Over the past week I have ignored my daughters, gave-up on work, haven’t seem my wife, and managed to create a web-enabled version of Zest.  Ok, most of what I said is lie, however, I did manage to create a web-enabled version of Zest while still spending quality time with the family (and getting some “real work” done).

How you ask? The magic of “SWT Browser Edition” in e4. Since e4 is already able to  cross compile the Draw2D examples, I thought I would take a shot at producing an e4 Graph Widget based on Zest.

public static void main(String[] args) {
     Display d = new Display();
     Shell shell = new Shell(d);
     shell.setLayout(new FillLayout());
     Graph g = new Graph(shell, SWT.NONE);
     GraphNode n1 = new GraphNode(g, SWT.NONE, "SWT");
     GraphNode n2 = new GraphNode(g, SWT.NONE, "Action Script");
     GraphNode n3 = new GraphNode(g, SWT.NONE, "Totally Awesome");
     new GraphConnection(g, SWT.NONE, n1, n2);
     new GraphConnection(g, SWT.NONE, n2, n3);
     new GraphConnection(g, SWT.NONE, n3, n1);
}

Using the SWT -> Action Script cross compiler, I was able to take the Zest widget and build an SWF file for it. I managed to create a small example.

There are a number of outstanding issues (no JFace adapters, no curved lines and some layouts are giving me grief), but it’s a start.

What do you think, should I bring this to e4?

Tags: e4, zest