JBuilder Add-ons


Borland's JBuilder IDE provides the OpenTools API, which allows you to add new functionality to the IDE.   I have written a number of these OpenTools add-ons which I hope will be useful to you.


The TabOrder OpenTool allows you to re-order the tabs in JBuilder's Content Manager.   You can sort the tabs based on the file name, the type of file, or the directory in which it resides.   You can also arbitrarily re-order the tabs.


The Cosmetics OpenTool allows you to make a number of cosmetic changes to the JBuilder IDE.   These changes affect the appearance of the Content Manager tabs and the splitter pane dividers.


JBLogger is not an OpenTool, per se.   It is actually a small front-end program for JBuilder that redirects the standard output and standard error to a log file, and then launches JBuilder.   You can configure where the log file should be stored, and the number of versions of the log file to keep.


OTLoader is an experimental OpenTool that can be used to load OpenTools into JBuilder.   Note that it is not a production quality OpenTool.   OTLoader uses a different ClassLoader for each OpenTool, so each OpenTool it loads can use a different version of the same class (same package, same class name).   This demonstrates the use of ClassLoaders, and will give you some idea of the possibilites that ClassLoaders provide.   Source code is included.


The Bugs  OpenTool is not one that is amenable to detailed descriptions -- it is one that you will just have to try to see what it does. You might describe it as a visualization tool; it will make it easier to see bugs in your code.