[Biojava-l] BioInformatics toolbox.

[Mario Gianota]

Hi all,

[snip]
> It occurs to me that there may be more users than there are
> programmers.  So, I'm looking to find out if there is a suite of tools
that
> are "ready out of the box" and don't require writing scripts,...  I don't
[snip]

> When I think of tools, I don't mean scripts - rather something that is GUI
> based that can be run and is intuitive.  Scripts usually aren't
> intuitive.  When I hear scripts, I think of many scripts that have to be
> run one after that other.  Even this is something that would be good in a
> gui - something to manage the repetitive tasks.

There is the possibility of using a 'tooling platform' as a base upon which
to develop a standard set of GUI based tools.

The IDE provided by www.eclipse.org is described as a universal tool
platform, or an open and extensible IDE for anything and nothing in
particular.

The IDE provides a framework (heavy lifting taken care of) for building GUI
based plugins which extend the functionality of the IDE itself. In a
nutshell, it is a plugin builder that allows itself to be heavily customised
and deployed. The plugins can be scripted using Netscape's JavaScript or
written in Java. Once the plugins have been developed, the IDE is
customized, branded with logos, "distrofied" and deployed with the plugins
as part of the distro. The result is a custom application (made up of
plugins) that contains its own build environment. Furthermore, the
application is automatically extensible because it inherits the extensible
features of the underlying IDE. Neat, huh ? Actually, it is more then neat
IMHO.

The value of the tooling platform approach is that you have a platform for
users and developers. The users use the platform to run the plugins and the
developers use the *same* platform to develop the plugins.

If you're interested head on over to www.eclipse.org and download a shiny
new build.

--Mario Gianota