com.bea.ide.ui.frame  Package

The frame service class 'com.bea.ide.frame.FrameSvc' provides access to the application's main JFrame, and it's auxiliary views, docked and floating.

A 'frame view' is a view that participates in the application level docking layout, as opposed to a 'document view' which shows a visual representation of a specific document, and participates only in the layout defined by the document service, in the central document area of the IDE.

To add a frame view to the IDE, you must specify it in an 'extension-xml' section of your extension.xml file:

    <extension-xml id="urn:com-bea-ide:frame">
        <frame-set>
            <frame-view class="workshop.shell.workspace.WorkspaceTreeContainer"
                label="Workspace" />
            <frame-view class="workshop.shell.workspace.WorkspaceFilesContainer"
                label="Files" />
        </frame-set>
        ...
    </extension-xml>

Note: In production code you would use the localization escaping mechanism to specify the labels.

The class specified in the 'frame-view' tag must extend 'Component', or implement 'com.bea.ide.frame.IFrameView', or both.

Perhaps the simplest test frame view would be:

    public class MyView extends JLabel
    {
        public MyView()
        {
            super("Hello World!");
            
            setBorder(new TopBorder());
            setHorizontalAlignment(CENTER);
        }
    }

    <extension-xml id="urn:com-bea-ide:frame">
        <frame-view-set>
            <frame-view class="com.mydomain.MyView" label="Salutation" />
        </frame-view-set>
    </extension-xml>

Once the IDE is started, however, you would still need to choose the 'Test' menu item from the View/Windows menu in order to make the view visible. In order for your view to show at start-up, it must participate in a 'frame-layout'.

Note that the view class will not actually be instantiated until the view is made visible for the first time.

There are 2 ways to participate more fully in the overall window layout of the IDE.

• Using 'application-layout' and 'frame-layout' tags.
• Using the 'location' child tag with 'frame-view'.

The following is an example of how to use 'frame-layout' to specify a floating layout containing several of the simple test views described above:

    <extension-xml id="urn:com-bea-ide:frame">
    <frame-view-set>
        <frame-view class="com.mydomain.MyView" id="v1" label="Salutation" />
        <frame-view class="com.mydomain.MyView" id="v2" label="Salutation" />
        <frame-view class="com.mydomain.MyView" id="v3" label="Salutation" />
        <frame-view class="com.mydomain.MyView" id="v4" label="Salutation" />
    </frame-view-set>

    <application-layout id="main">
        <frame-layout>
            <frame-container orientation="horizontal">
                <frame-view-ref class="com.mydomain.MyView" id="v1" proportion="50%" />
                <frame-container width="50%">
                    <frame-view-ref class="com.mydomain.MyView" id="v2" proportion="25%" />
                    <frame-container height="75%">
                        <frame-view-ref class="com.mydomain.MyView" id="v3" proportion="50%" />
                        <frame-view-ref class="com.mydomain.MyView" id="v4" proportion="50%" />
                    </frame-container>
                </frame-container>
            </frame-container>
        </frame-view-layout>
    </application-layout>
    </extension-xml>

Note that this specification only applies to the default layout. Once the user has started the IDE for the first time, and exited, a user specific layout is saved, and all extension.xml layouts are ignored in the next session. If you are playing with layouts, you will need to delete %USER_PROFILES%/.workshop.pref between IDE invocations to see your changes.

In any such 'frame-layout' specification, only the 'orientation' attribute of the root 'frame-container' is enforced. Any 'orientation' attributes in sub-nodes are ignored. Orientation alternates between horizontal and vertical at each level of the generated tree structure. Each level may also have an arbitrary number of child nodes.

Frame-container nodes in the main frame start with a set of root nodes, each with an orientation of 'north', 'south', 'east', or 'west'. The following XML places a sub-layout, identical to the floating layout above, at the bottom of the main frame window:

    <extension-xml id="urn:com-bea-ide:frame">

    ...

    <application-layout id="main">
        <frame-layout id="main">
            <frame-container orientation="south" proportion="20%">
                <frame-view-ref class="com.mydomain.MyView" id="v1" proportion="50%" />
                <frame-container width="50%">
                    <frame-view-ref class="com.mydomain.MyView" id="v2" proportion="25%" />
                    <frame-container height="75%">
                        <frame-view-ref class="com.mydomain.MyView" id="v3" proportion="50%" />
                        <frame-view-ref class="com.mydomain.MyView" id="v4" proportion="50%" />
                    </frame-container>
                </frame-container>
            </frame-container>
        </frame-view-layout>
    </application-layout>
    </extension-xml>

The second method of placing a frame view is more flexible, and will impact an existing saved layout, the first time a new frame view is seen. The following is an example that uses the 'location' child tag on a 'frame-view' to place a custom output window tabbed with the standard 'Build' output window:

  <frame-view-set>
    <frame-view class="workshop.shell.output.OutputWindow" id="Hello" label="&Salutations">
        <location classDest="workshop.shell.output.OutputWindow"
                idDest="Build" orientation="tabbed" visible="true" />
    </frame-view>
  </frame-view-set>

This same technique can be used to place a new view in any relationship to an existing view, using the orientations 'north', 'south', 'west', and 'east'.

Reference

The following section lists all the valid attributes of the tags introduced above:

Interface Summary

Class Summary