Re: Icons for RDi Perspectives

Thanks Buck. I had found some of that stuff but like you could not find the references to the file. In older versions of Eclipse they appear to have been more obvious but no longer.

One post I found somewhere commented that it can now only be done via a plug-in - but I could find no references to how this would work and frankly writing a plug-in to change an icon is not high on my priority list!


Jon Paris

www.partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com

On Mar 6, 2019, at 2:40 PM, Buck Calabro <kc2hiz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 2/25/2019 12:08 PM, Jon Paris wrote:

I love being able to create my own perspectives - but the utility is somewhat diminished by the fact that the icon used is the same as that of the perspective that was modified to make it. That forces me to have the text showing so that I can differentiate them.

I've done some googling around and all of the instructions for changing the icons seem to only be applicable to older versions ... or at least the files that need to be modified don't seem to be present.

Has anyone had any luck doing this?

No luck. The internals are quite intricate. There's a config file
(workspace
directory/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.e4.workbench/workbench.xmi)
that tells Eclipse where to find the icon, but the iconURI that it
refers to isn't obviously any place I can find in the file system.

I can find eg system_persp.gif inside of the hierarchy where RDi/Eclipse
is loaded. In Windows, that might be Program Files, but I put mine in
/ibm. So the tree to find the icons is
/ibm/rdi96/configuration/.settings/org.eclipse.osgi/some small number
like 1311/0/.cp/icons/full/cview16/system_persp.gif Unfortunately, if I
start with -clean, all those numbered directories get... refreshed.
Apparently from the original .jar files, where the original icons are
placed by the developer.

If I could figure out where the cross-reference is between the xmi file
and the physical (semi-temporary) location of the icon, I could probably
figure out how to change the icon for eg my copy of the RSE perspective.
But I haven't got that far, and I'm not sure what to do once I hit
-clean and it all goes away.

FWIW, I was able to edit the system_persp.gif file and make it look
different on the RDi toolbar. But that different icon is identical for
the stock RSE perspective and also my copy. I wonder if there's a way to
reach out and touch the icon with a plug-in? I'd need to do a lot more
digging into the internals of Eclipse.

So... nothing really to add, but I did look.

--
--buck

http://wiki.midrange.com
Your updates make it better!

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