Drag and Drop visual editor in Eclipse

Question

In my current project, I write high-level specification ( as indicated below for reference) and am parsing it using grammar written in ANTLR and then using StringTempate to generate equivalent Java programming code. Now, my client finds the writing of this textual high-level specification difficult and want me to provide equivalent visual drag and drop programming constructs and editor to specify this programming constructs. My question is : does eclipse provide any drag and drop workbench to develop visual programming constructs and editors? It MAY be easy to integrate with ANTLR.

A Sample example or its link will be useful.

TemperatureSensor
      generate tempMeasurement : TempStruct;

TempStruct
      tempValue : double;
      unitOfMeasurement: String;   

Answer 1

You could have a look at Graphiti, it is much lighter than GMF and easier to setup. https://eclipse.org/graphiti/

In any case to leverage existing tools in eclipse to manipulate models, you absolutely need a metamodel to integrate into the EMF, so you might use Xtext to develop that, based on your existing antlr grammar.

Answer 2

Have a look at Eclipse Graphical Editing Framework (GEF), it's a framework for creating graphical editors in an Eclipse-based product or plug-in. There are even some efforts to integration GEF with XText, for example this one.