Eclipse Cookbook

1.6. Managing Perspectives, Views, and Editors

Problem

How do you work with Eclipse views, editors, and perspectives?

Solution

To use Eclipse, you need to know what view, editor, and perspective mean:

View

This is a window that gives you a graphical display of your data, whether that data is text, bulleted lists, a GUI, images, and so on.

Editor

An editor is much like a view, except that the data in it is editable. When you’re working on your code, you edit it in an editor, which is usually the central window displayed in the workbench.

Perspective

A perspective is a well-defined collection of views and editors. When you open a perspective, its views and/or editors appear in the workbench.

Discussion

Views display data but don’t let you edit it; editors both display data and make it editable. Because screen space is always at a premium in GUIs, views are often stacked one on top of another. You select the one you want to see using tabs that appear on the edge of the stacked views.

Tip

If you want to reopen a view you’ve closed by mistake, select Window→ Show View, and choose the view you want from the menu that appears.

When you open code or other resources, their data will appear in an editor so that you can work on it. Eclipse automatically selects the right editor for the resource you’re opening, based on the resource’s file extension: the JDT’s Java code editor for Java code (.java files), an XML editor if you have one installed for XML files (.xml files), and so on. You ...