Port util classes from designer

- ported a couple utility classes from Designer
I have a commit (not pushed yet) which updates all licence headers to the following. Given that AUTHORS.txt does not exist in any plugins, would you mind replacing these headers too.

/*************************************************************************************
 * JBoss, Home of Professional Open Source.
* See the COPYRIGHT.txt file distributed with this work for information
* regarding copyright ownership. Some portions may be licensed
* to Red Hat, Inc. under one or more contributor license agreements.
*
* This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
* modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
* License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
* version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
*
* This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
* but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
* Lesser General Public License for more details.
*
* You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
* License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software
* Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA
* 02110-1301 USA.
 ************************************************************************************/