How do I use an SWT Control to render the content of an SWT/JFace table?

Question

I have a JFace TableViewer with an SWT Table, and I would like to custom render the content of some cells. I would like to use an SWT Control to render the cell content.

I would prefer to have only one instance of the Control doing the rendering, but if I have to instantiate one for each row, that would be acceptable.

Next, the solution MUST be compatible with the ContentProvider/LabelProvider approach (I am using EMF). This means that I cannot use the solution described in Sniplet 126 (http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/org.eclipse.swt.snippets).

Next, I though about using custom drawing. But here the catch is, that I have to send individual drawing operations to the graphics context. I was trying to have the Control render the content for me by calling redraw() or print(GC) upon SWT.PaintItem, but that just lead to uncontrollable flickering.

At this point, my best guess is to use SWT.PaintItem to do the drawing. This will result in duplicate code, as I already have a Control that can render the content the way I'd like it. I'd like to prevent this redundancy.

Any help is appreciated!

Answer 1

Well, after banging my head against a wall several times I made some progress. Specifically, I found this formu entry:

http://www.eclipsezone.com/eclipse/forums/t115489.html

It actually offers two solutions: The first solution actually uses widgets (not recommended due to performance, but I knew that before). I will try this out, and may post here how it goes.

The second solution suggests using StyledCellLabelProvider. I looked into this before, but it isn't powerful enough for my purposes. At least that's what I think right now.