Bug 24168 [Dialogs] XML dialog settings cannot start with a comment
I created a dialog_settings.xml for my plugin, and entered on the very first line a comment: the settings then fail to load with ClassCastException. An easy workaround is to push the comment down into the XML tree. org.eclipse.jface.dialogs.DialogSettings line 181: Element root = (Element) document.getFirstChild(); If the first child is not an element (e.g. a comment), ClassCastException is thrown.
bundles/org.eclipse.jface/src/org/eclipse/jface/dialogs/DialogSettings.java
*
 * @param sectionName the name of the section in the settings.
 */
public DialogSettings(String sectionName) {
	name = sectionName;
	items = new HashMap();
	arrayItems = new HashMap();
	sections = new HashMap();
}
/* (non-Javadoc)
 * Method declared on IDialogSettings.
 */
public IDialogSettings addNewSection(String name) {
	DialogSettings section = new DialogSettings(name);
	addSection(section);
	return section;
}
/* (non-Javadoc)
 * Method declared on IDialogSettings.
 */
public void addSection(IDialogSettings section) { 
	sections.put(section.getName(),section);
}
/* (non-Javadoc)
 * Method declared on IDialogSettings.
 */
public String get(String key) {
	return (String)items.get(key);
}
/* (non-Javadoc)