Treffer: Penumbra: Simplifying Eclipse.

This article presents a plug-in called Penumbra in an attempt to address the growing complexity of Eclipse. Designed with the goal to simplify the full-blown environment, Penumbra has been used by computer students at Purdue University, Indiana with great success. The fully qualified name of the plug-in is edu.purdue.penumbra. It consists of 60 classes organized in seven packages. The two most important files in the plug-in are plugin.xml and PenumbraPlugin.java, contained in the main package. Plugin.xml defines all properties of the plug-in. A perspective in Eclipse defines the menus, toolbars, and views users see. As such, Penumbra perspective is undoubtedly one of the most essential parts of the plug-in. The Penumbra perspective is based on the Java perspective, which is the default programming perspective in Eclipse. The core of the Penumbra perspective is the class PenumbraPerspectiveFactory. The authors found that Eclipse can be modified to be an excellent development environment for introductory programming sources. The simplified Penumbra perspective, as well as the added features such as check out and submission, have increased acceptance by students. Furthermore, the development of features such as the Penumbra hierarchy view increases the pedagogical support of Eclipse.