| <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"><HTML> |
| <HEAD> |
| |
| <meta name="copyright" content="Copyright (c) IBM Corporation and others 2000, 2005. This page is made available under license. For full details see the LEGAL in the documentation book that contains this page." > |
| |
| <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> |
| <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Style-Type" CONTENT="text/css"> |
| |
| <LINK REL="STYLESHEET" HREF="../book.css" CHARSET="ISO-8859-1" TYPE="text/css"> |
| <TITLE> |
| Building a Rich Client Platform application |
| </TITLE> |
| |
| <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" HREF="../book.css"> |
| </HEAD> |
| <BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff"> |
| <h1>Building a Rich Client Platform application</h1> |
| <P> |
| While the Eclipse platform is designed to serve as an open tools platform, it is architected so that its components could be |
| used to build just about any client application. The minimal set of plug-ins needed to build a rich client application is collectively |
| known as the <b>Rich Client Platform</b>. |
| </P> |
| <p> |
| Applications that don't require a common resource model can be built using a subset of the platform. These rich applications |
| are still based on a dynamic plug-in model, and the UI is built using the same toolkits and extension points. The layout and |
| function of the workbench is under fine-grained control of the plug-in developer in this case. Up until now, we've been adding |
| all of our visible function to the platform SDK workbench. In a rich client application, we are responsible for defining the |
| application and its workbench. |
| </P> |
| <p> |
| When we say that the Rich Client Platform is the minimal set of plug-ins needed to build a platform application with |
| a UI, we mean that your application need only require two plug-ins, <b>org.eclipse.ui</b> and <b>org.eclipse.core runtime</b>. |
| However, rich client applications are free to use any API deemed necessary |
| for their feature set, and can require any plug-ins above the bare minimum. The |
| <a href="../reference/misc/overview-platform.html">Map of platform plug-ins</a> is a useful |
| reference when determing what plug-ins should be required when using various platform |
| API.</P> |
| <p>The main thing that differentiates a rich client application from the platform workbench is that the application |
| is responsible for defining which class should be run as the main application. We'll look at how this is done in |
| the context of an example. |
| </p> |
| |
| |
| </BODY></HTML> |
