Yesterday I installed the Eclipse Web Tools Platform again, and now succesfully, using the Eclipse update mechanism, on my Kubuntu dapper eclipse install. Because it has a validating XML editor, the one last thing I still needed jEdit for. (I do miss the vertical selection feature of jEdit, though.) It signals me of errors, and allows autocompletion.

Now I can validate all Chemical Markup Langauge files I have around, which is very useful for those I use to make sure CDK and Bioclipse is working properly. I just need to make sure I use the http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance namespace, for example as in this example from CDK SVN:

<cml title="Regression tests for valid XML Schema documents for CML 2.3"

  xmlns="http://www.xml-cml.org/schema"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.xml-cml.org/schema ../../../io/cml/data/cml23.xsd">

Now, I do have some questions. Firstly, does WTP allow recycling of the XML editor? That is, can I use their validating XML editor in, for example, Bioclipse? Would I just depend on the right plugin jars from WTP, or is it more complicated? Alternatively, since in RCP all is a plugin, can WTP be installed as plugin in Bioclipse directly??

Secondly, does Kubuntu or Debian sid have binary packages for WTP? I think to remember having read something about this, in relation with splitting up the WTP into smaller, more specific plugins. Anyone?

xml  bioclipse  cml