developers/faq.html

<h2>Frequently Asked Questions</h2>

<!-- <h3>[General]</h3> -->

<ol>
	<h4>
	<li>Is it possible to separate the diagram data from the domain
	data?
	</h4>
	<p>Yes, and it is also recommended to do so. Simply use the
	standard EMF mechanisms to store the domain objects in an EMF resource
	of your choice. The tutorial follows the very simple approach to store
	both the diagram and domain objects inside the same resource, this is
	definitely not the way to go for building your own tool. Have a look at
	this <a
		href="http://www.eclipse.org/forums/index.php?t=msg&th=172247&start=0&S=acb08c1bf425f0ccb0106fb3a46a4bad">
	forum entry</a> to see how it can be changed for the tutorial.</p>

	<h4>
	<li>Is it possible to integrate an arbitrary automatic layouter
	with Graphiti?
	</h4>
	<p>Yes, indeed. Use a Custom Feature to do so. The following <a
		href="resources/TutorialLayoutDiagramFeature.java">snippet</a> shows
	how a layouter can be integrated into the Graphiti tutorial. In the
	snippet, we use a layouter which comes with GEF. Note, that this
	requires a direct dependency to Draw2D. Your Feature Provider has to
	deliver the Layout Feature as a Custom Feature. Then the action will be
	available via the context menu.</p>

	<h4>
	<li>How do i build an editable property sheet?
	</h4>
	<p>We use the non-editable property sheet in the examples.common
	and examples.tutorial plugins of the Graphiti project as a touchstone.










	
	<ol>
		<li>Study the extension point <code>org.eclipse.ui.views.properties.tabbed.propertyContributor</code>.
		See the <code>org.eclipse.graphiti.examples.common.property</code>
		package as reference.</li>
		<li>Study the extension point <code>org.eclipse.ui.views.properties.tabbed.propertySections</code>.
		See the <code>org.eclipse.graphiti.examples.tutorial.property</code>
		package as reference.</li>
		<li>In the class <code>TutorialEClassSection</code> from the
		tutorial plug-in set the <code>nameText</code> field as editable and
		add a <code>ModifyListener</code> to the <code>nameText</code> field
		as shown in the <a href="resources/ModifyListener.txt">snippet</a>.</li>

	</ol>
	</p>

	<h4>
	<li>How do i build structured menus on context buttons?
	</h4>
	<p>If you want a compact context button pad you might consider
	organizing your context buttons into sub-menus. Use <code>ContextButtonEntry</code>'s
	method <code>addContextButtonMenuEntry</code> to add sub-entries to the
	context menu entry. If a menu entry has sub-entries this is visualized
	by a small triangle in the lower right corner of the entry
	representation and left-clicking opens the sub-menu.</p>

	<h4>
	<li>Why does pressing F2 to enable direct editing only work if the
	mouse cursor is placed over the shape?
	</h4>
	<p>In general it is possible to invoke direct editing for a
	selected shape by pressing F2. Since the selected object may contain
	more than one editable object (e.g. two text fields) or the hierarchy
	may not be clear, the Graphiti framework may not be able to
	automatically determine which field should be edited. As a last resort
	the framework tries to use the shape the mouse cursor is placed upon.</p>
	<p>But you can help the framework out by overriding the method
	getLocationInfo in your ToolBehaviorProvider. This method is called
	upon pressing F2 and can return a LocationInfo object stating which
	text object shall be edited. Here's a <a
		href="resources/GetLocationInfo.java">short example implementation</a>
	for the tutorial.</p>
</ol>