[Eclipse] GEF Introduction Series (Ii. GEF Overview)

As already mentioned in the previous post, the GEF (graphical Editor framework) is a graphical editing framework that allows developers to graphically display and edit models to enhance the user experience. There are a number of applications such as UML Class diagram editor, graphical XML editor, interface design tools, and graphical database structure design tools, and so on. In a way, they can be found to have the following similarities in graphical editing:

Provides an editing area and a toolbar where the user selects the tool needed in the sidebar, dragging or clicking to place the node or connection in the editing area;

Nodes can contain child nodes;

Users can view and modify most of the properties of a node or connection;

The connection endpoint is anchored on the node;

Provides context menu and keyboard commands;

To provide graphics zoom function;

Provides an outline view that displays a thumbnail of the editing area, or a tree-like model structure;

Support undo/Redo function;

Wait a minute.

Figure 1 The working interface of the GEF-based Interface design tool (Visual editor,ve)