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Good news, the Sketch project was finally created! You may find it at http://www.eclipse.org/sketch

Although some improvements and refactoring are taking place right now, the API is already usable if you would like to pre-alpha-test it.

Me, Chris and Mariot have decided to go for Git as the version control. We are a fresh new project, so there were no reason not to: http://git.eclipse.org/c/sketch/org.eclipse.sketch.git/

Be aware that we are still re-organizing everything, and the code will be probably changed a lot, but if you see something really ugly, please file a bug.

The future of Sketch, as I envision it, includes users drawing their own graphical representations for models, being able to make suggestions to existing models using their own vocabulary and ultimately writing their own models. There is a very interesting discussion on this regard at the forum. If you are interested, please join it.

As for the present, I’ve prepared two videos for FlexiTools’2010, showing the features already available in Sketch.

1. VIDEO Creating a Use Case Diagram

Here I extend the Shapes editor (which is only able to model Squares and Triangles) to build such diagram.

2. VIDEO Creating an Activity Diagram and Making Annotations

Here is a slightly more complex example, plus annotations, which is the most immediate outcome of Sketch, since no recognition is needed.

There’s a long time since i’ve blogged about the FlexiTools’2010 workshop and the discussion about a flexible graphic representation made possible in Eclipse graphical editors.

Here we talk about creating an intermediate element which holds a flexible graphic representation, in opposition to it’s canonical one (which in GMF is defined at .gmfgraph model). The users would be able to draw the elements as they wish, and as well be able to create new ones, something like this:

Here is a video explaining how it works, please watch and comment (go to Sketch Forum):

Pen-based/Tablet technology it’s been around for a long time, but recently this ‘touch-oriented interaction’ has been gaining more attention, with all the buzz around iPad. So if we’re starting to interact to devices with our hands, we are not clicking anymore — perhaps our interfaces should start to be less click-oriented? How can we take advantage of the popularity of those devices? Wouldn’t be nice if we had sketching recognition withing Eclipse?

I think so, I’ve been working on sketch recognition for GEF/GMF editors while creating the MoLIC editor, take a look:

Sketch API (former OmniModeling) on MoLIC Editor from Ugo Sangiorgi on Vimeo.

There are other posts on this blog reporting the evolution until this point — the API is able to recognize shapes the way you draw, learning withing the process if it cant recognize it upfront. It can recognize any shape, really, you will ‘teach’ it how.

Omnimodeling: Multi-Agent Recognition from Ugo Sangiorgi on Vimeo.

So it’s on! I decided to contribute to Eclipse by proposing a Sketch API for GEF/GMF using the former OmniModeling project base, take a look at the proposal we are working on. Mariot Chauvin and Chris Aniszczyk are helping me through, thank you so much guys!

Comments and contributions are welcome

I should acknowledge Simone D.J. Barbosa for the kind support during the OmniModeling project, as well as my colleagues at the Semiotic Engineering Group of PUCRio.