Eclipse Scout: Release Notes

The Eclipse Scout 9.0 version was released as part of the Eclipse 2019-03 Simultaneous Release (release schedule) on March 20, 2019.

The latest version of this release is: 9.0.0.018_Simrel_2019_06

You can see the detailed change log on GitHub.

So far Scout only supported Java 8. In addition to the Java 8 support Scout 9 officially supports OpenJDK 11 too!

Please note that Java 9 and 10 are not supported and that Oracle only provides free Java 8 updates for commercial use until end of January 2019. Therefore it is recommended to use OpenJDK 11.0.1 or newer. Please refer to the Migration guide for instructions how to migrate.

In the future Scout plans to support each LTS (long term support) version of Java. After Java 11 the next supported version might by Java 17. Please note that these plans may change at a future release.

However there are some limitations when using Java 11:

Add a menu entry Scout → Search for duplicate @ClassId Values to manually trigger a search for duplicate class ids in the workspace.

Enter the dark side…​ and use the new dark theme of Scout!

Scout now provides a dark theme in addition to the default theme. You can either activate it by default by setting the property scout.ui.theme to dark in the config.properties, or let the user choose what he likes more.

In order to change the theme during runtime you can use the method setTheme of the desktop (Scout Classic and Scout JS). The chosen theme will be stored in a cookie and activated again on the next visit.

Scout group boxes will react reduced widths by transforming its contents to allow better readability. There are three responsive states. The default state is the 'normal' state. In this state no transformations will be applied. In the 'condensed' state, all the label positions will be set to 'TOP'. In the 'compact' state, a one column layout will be enforced. This last state is only available in a Scout-JS application.

Once a group box becomes smaller than its preferred width it will transform its internal fields to increase readability. For more information consult the technical guide.

Before Scout 9 the ServerRunContextFilter was used to create Scout server contexts for REST APIs. This filter used a user based TTL cache that was not bound to the HTTP session.

Starting with Scout 9 there are two new filters available:

During development, the JavaScript and CSS files are always rebuilt when requested by the browser. Depending on the size of the JS and Less code this may take a while, especially the processing of the Less code is expensive. This is unfortunate if only JavaScript code is adjusted or even if no JS or CSS code is touched at all.

To improve this, a Script File Watcher can now be activated which watches all the JS and Less files and triggers a rebuild only if a file changes. This means the files are not always rebuilt on every page reload anymore but only if a relevant file changes. In order to activate the watcher, you need to set the property scout.dev.scriptfile.rebuild to false.

Until Scout 8.0 a Close- or Cancel-Button ignored the enabled-granted property to ensure the form can be closed even if the full form has been disabled using setEnabledGranted(false). This was confusing because the same convenience was not available for all other enabled dimensions.

Since Scout 9.0 Close- and Cancel-Buttons can be disabled like any other form field. But one special handling is still present: The method isEnabledIncludingParents ignores the enabled state of the parents and always returns the state of the button only.

So if a Form or GroupBox is disabled using setEnabled(false) or setEnabledGranted(false) or any other dimension, the full form gets disabled except the Close- and Cancel-Buttons. As soon as the button is disabled explicitly (e.g. by calling setEnabled(false) on the button itself or by propagating to the button using setEnabled(false, false, true) on a parent composite) it will be disabled and the form cannot be closed anymore.

The layout structure of the scrollbar comes now with an additional div, and the positioning of the scollbar uses now padding instead of margin.

With this change, the usability of the scout scrollbar has improved. The thumb is now easier to catch, especially when positioned at the very edge of the screen.

The wizard progress has a new design.

Wizard steps can now be marked as finished, in this case they will be displayed with a check mark icon in the wizard progress.

The API to work with Pages (PageWithTable, PageWithNodes) has been improved. It is now possible to declare child pages in the static JSON model of outlines and the table within a PageWithTable has a default reload handler installed.

Now the method _loadTableData (which is responsible for fetching data for a PageWithTable) also gets an optional argument searchFilter holding the exported data of the first form that is attached to the table using a FormTableControl (typically the SearchForm). This makes it easier to use the values from a search form by e.g. passing them to a REST backend to limit the results returned from the server.

Finally the TreeNode (and therefore all pages because they are tree nodes) get a method _jsonModel to declare the static JSON model that belongs to that tree node or page. This works the same way as with all other widgets now.

All fields having lookup calls (ListBox, RadioButtonGroup, SmartField, TagField) now fire a new event 'lookupCallDone' always when a lookup call has been executed and the result was processed by the field.

The Scout properties are now resolved in a slightly different order (Bug 541099). The environment variables are now resolved before the config.properties file.

Using environment variables, it is now possible to override values in the configuration file, as is already possible using system properties (-D flags on JVM command line). This change should simplify the usage of Scout in environments where the application should be static (example: Kubernetes, Docker), but still allow a degree of flexibility.

Since environment variables are not allowed to contain dots/periods (.), the new lookup also searches for an equivalent environment variable by replacing periods with underscores (_) and converting the property to uppercase.

For both Table and Tree a new CheckableStyle was added. With the CHECKBOX_TABLE_ROW/CHECKBOX_TREE_NODE style it’s possible to check/uncheck a row or node by clicking basically anywhere on the row or node. This new CheckableStyle is now the default in AbstractTree and AbstractListBox. With this CheckableStyle active, expansion on double click is not supported for enabled rows/nodes, since it interferes with the checking/unchecking action.

Scout now enables the NaturalCollatorProvider by default. When comparing text using a collator (e.g. via StringUtility), strings are now sorted more "naturally". Unlike with the JVM default, spaces (" “) and hyphens (”-") are no longer ignored.

This is an old bug fix that was finally made permanent.

Example:

Projects that wish to keep the existing behavior can do so by providing their own CollatorProvider (see migration guide).

There are several new properties added to adapt the design of the MenuBar.

The URI Action OpenUriAction.POPUP_WINDOW is added. The existing URI Action NEW_WINDOW leaves it to the browser whether a new tab or a new window is opened. Using the new URI Action POPUP_WINDOW, the URI will always be opened in a new window.

The new property defines if the column can be considered as a candidate for the node column. The node column is used to display the control to expand and collapse rows in a hierarchical table. If false the column will be skipped when scanning for the node column and the next suitable column will be chosen as node column.

The new interface org.eclipse.scout.rt.mom.jms.IJmsMessageHandler adds suport for incoming and outgoing JMS message handling. The default implementation org.eclipse.scout.rt.mom.jms.LogJmsMessageHandler logs all messages on level DEBUG.

Now the HtmlEnvironment fires a propertyChange Event when it gets (re)initialized. All Layouts or other Components that depend on the HtmlEnvironment’s properties should listen to that event and handle it appropriately.

This new display mode is targeted at users working on laptops or other small screens. It reduces the whitespace between elements to display more content on the available screen size.

Activate the dense mode by setting IDesktop.setDense(true). An additional less file displaystyle-dense.less contains all necessary styling changes.

The MessageBox widget now supports the OS specific copy to clipboard key-shortcut. When pressed, all text of the MessageBox, including the hiddenText property, is copied to the clipboard.

As NlsResourceBundle does not use any built features of java.util.ResourceBundle, it does no longer depend on java.util.ResourceBundle.

Configuration property scout.resourceBundle.checkContainsKey was removed as it is now obsolete.

The Data Object base class DoEntity was extended with a generic equals() and hashCode() implementation considering all attributes of a data object for equality. A data object is equals to another data object, if the Java class of both data objects is identical and the attribute maps (including their nested values) of both data objects are equals.

For futher details see: