Eclipse launches new Visual Editor project

The Eclipse consortium tomorrow will announce the establishment of the Visual Editor Project, a new effort to create and deliver an open visual GUI construction and editing platform. The project is designed to generically work with any user interface framework and programming language Eclipse supports; ultimately, it will implement a reference GUI builder for the Java Swing/JFC and SWT graphical user interface frameworks.

A number of open source and commercial projects will benefit from integrating GUI building capabilities that equally support SWING/JFC, SWT, and other environments. When the Visual Editor reference distributions are complete, Eclipse developers will no longer need to create Java graphical user interfaces by writing source code by hand.

IBM is contributing the source code for its Visual Editor for Java as the initial source code contribution. Contributors, including Advanced Systems Concepts, Instantiations, and Red Hat, also will provide resources to deliver SWT support as one of the initial tasks within the project.

“Just as the Visual Editor Project itself would not be possible without the infrastructure provided by the Java Development Tooling project and Graphical Editor Framework, we intend to enable developers to create new, exciting, and innovative technology that would not have been feasible without the infrastructure provided by the Visual Editor project,†said David Orme of Advanced Systems Concepts, head of the Visual Editor Project.

Organizers of the Visual Tools Project are responding to “overwhelming demand” from the Eclipse tools ecosystem by contributing resources including design expertise, source code, and additional development resources, an IBM spokeswoman said. The release of the GUI builder code will allow developers that rely on open tools to experience the same kind of productivity they could obtain from proprietary IDEs.

More information can be obtained about the Eclipse Visual Editor project, or from these participating companies:
Advanced Systems Concepts, IBM,
Instantiations,
Red Hat, and
Canoo.

Full details of the Eclipse consortium, the Eclipse
Platform, and its royalty-free downloads are available at the Eclipse site.