## Activities Editor Pages

The activities editor consists of three pages, the Viewers Page, the Descriptions Page and the "activities.xml" Page.

Viewers Page

The viewers page has two separate viewers, one viewer is for the plug-ins and fragments, and the other viewer is for the categories and activities, as well as plug-ins and fragments.

The first viewer displays all the plug-ins and fragments located in Eclipse's workspace directory. The second viewer displays the categories, the activities bound to categories and the plug-ins bound to activities. The latter items are also initially read from Eclipse's workspace directory.

Descriptions Page

Categories and activities are defined by mandatory IDs, names and optional descriptions. The descriptions page has two viewers, one which allows for the modification of categories' descriptions and the other of activities' descriptions.

The first viewer displays the categories, their respective ID, name and the editable description field. The second viewer shows the same information for the current activities. When the editor switches to another page, the descriptions are then updated in the "activities.xml" file.

"activities.xml" Page

When the "activities.xml" page tab is clicked it updates automatically. The file will contain the category, activity, and binding definitions represented in the viewers' page.

Generated Format

Activity pattern bindings are created when plug-ins are added to an activity. The patterns follow a syntax similar to the following example: "org\.eclipse\.pde/.*" for the plug-in "org.eclipse.pde". If all the plug-ins starting with "org.eclipse.pde" have been added to the same activity, the individual plug-ins patterns are replaced with "org\.eclipse\.pde\..*/.*". Similarly, on removal of a plug-in from an activity where the latter pattern is defined, the pattern will be replaced by the patterns of the plug-ins remaining in that activity. The activity editor will read activity pattern bindings on start up from defined "org.eclipse.activities" extensions defined in other plug-ins if and only if they follow the syntax described above.

A unique ID is generated when an activity is created. The ID has the following format: "activityName" + Activity, where the activity name has been stripped from spaces, and converted to lower case. A unique ID is generated when a category is created. The ID will have the following format: "categoryName" + Category, where the category name has been stripped from spaces, and converted to lower case.

Activities

Activities Example