Creating overlay icons

There are cases where table viewer icon decoration is not possible. ( exception single column table , you can do). By creating overlay icons and returning them in
ITableLabelProvider
public Image getColumnImage(Object element, int columnIndex) would suffice.

Ex:

ImageDescriptor desc = WorkbenchPlugin.getImageDescriptor(FilterIconDecorator.DECORATOR_ICON_PATH);
if(desc != null)
{
DecorationOverlayIcon decoratedImage = new DecorationOverlayIcon(
image, desc, IDecoration.BOTTOM_LEFT);
if (decoratedImage != null)
return decoratedImage.createImage();
}

How to restore workbench settings

Here is sample code to enable saving and restoring setting related to Workbench.

Override WorkbenchAdvisor.initialize(IWorkbenchConfigurer configurer) to define/register workbench related settings before any window being shown up.


public void initialize(IWorkbenchConfigurer configurer) {

configurer.setSaveAndRestore(true);

}

How to use Form layout

Form layout is basically very flexible layout and used to place controls in a composite when there is no idea about how to layout them ahead. i.e layout controls depend on a single control(X). when the position of control(X) is changed, the dependent controls positions will be changed consequently.

For example:

Composite buttonPanel = new Composite(this, SWT.NONE);
buttonPanel.setLayout(new FormLayout());
final FormData buttonPanelFormData = new FormData();
int m_offset = 10; // border offset.
buttonPanelFormData.top = new FormAttachment(0, m_offset);
buttonPanelFormData.left = new FormAttachment(0, m_offset);
buttonPanelFormData.right = new FormAttachment(100, -m_offset);
buttonPanel.setLayoutData(buttonPanelFormData);

Button m_addButton = new Button(buttonPanel, SWT.PUSH);
m_addButton.setText(BUTTON_ADD_LABEL);
FormData addButtonFormData = new FormData();
addButtonFormData.top = new FormAttachment(0, 0);
addButtonFormData.left = new FormAttachment(0, 0);
addButtonFormData.width = 20; //button width;
m_addButton.setLayoutData(addButtonFormData);

Button m_editButton = new Button(buttonPanel, SWT.PUSH);
m_editButton.setText(BUTTON_EDIT_LABEL);
FormData editButtonFormData = new FormData();
editButtonFormData.top = new FormAttachment(0, 0);
// edit button is placed next to add button with horizontal gap of m_offset
editButtonFormData.left = new FormAttachment(m_addButton, m_offset);
editButtonFormData.width = 20;//button width
m_editButton.setLayoutData(editButtonFormData);

Similarly controls can be placed anywhere with the reference of control(X).

How to embed Swing control inside SWT Composite?

You need an SWT_AWT bridge to create WEmbeddedFrame which will be used to add Swing Controls.

Here is sample code that adds JLabel to AWT frame.

JLabel label = new JLabel("sample label");

Composite composite = new Composite(shell, SWT.EMBEDDED);

Frame frame = SWT_AWT.new_Frame(composite);

frame.setLayout(new BorderLayout());

frame.add(label,BorderLayout.CENTER);