I have a Java desktop application running from the command line. I need to put a rich GUI on it and Eclipse RCP would be ideal, except there are some problems with it – especially the learning curve.
The Eclipse RCP book is out of date (written for Eclipse 3.1). I don’t know how up-to-date and complete other resources for learning Eclipse RCP are. The e4 project was supposed to simplify this learning curve, but there are few resources for learning e4.
Can anyone offer some insight as to whether Eclipse RCP or e4 is better suited to building a rich GUI for a desktop application given that I’ll have to deal with the learning curve for whichever one I choose?
Thanks.
As you say, there’s not too much literature available, I’d stick with the bigger community, and that’s almost certainly Eclipse 3.4/3.5. I can recommend this book, even if it doesn’t cover RCP. For the RCP part I’d just start with one of the samples (the basic email rcp app) and experiment. The eclipse newsgroups are a great source of information to learn and get help.