Hello Frank,
> as far as I see this, the change may be done without adding
> to much complexity to the ConstraintsConverter class.
That's right. I made changes the way you've mentioned some lines below
("else if (TableLayout.class.[...]"). It isn't a problem for me to change
the source code but I think this "feature request" would be helpful to other
SwixML _users_, too! The java built-in layout managers just suck. They are
like swing: generic, and a lot of work is needed to get good results. And
some layouts are just impossible to implement (look at the JGoodies forms
white paper for a comparison between JGoodies forms and GridBagLayout).
My code for integrating TableLayout consists of about just 50 lines of
(prototype) code. It is sad that I needed to patch the SwixML code to
integrate this very useful "extension".
> I assume you would like to change the somewhat static
> code in the convert method to a more dynamic one,
> like introducing a BorderLayoutConstraintsConverter and
> CardLayoutConstraintsConverter to replace the current
> code in convert with the iteration you mentioned?
You're right. The iteration isn't needed. Instead the implementation should
use a Map as in ConverterLibrary and SwingTagLibrary.
> Your code has another
> "else if (TableLayout.class.equals(type)) {"
> in it, correct?
Sadly correct :-)
> Of course, this may be changed
> to a list-iteration-approach and the list should as well
> be exposed to users of the API. Wolf, what do you
> think?
There shouldn't be a list-iteration-approach but a Map where additional
converters could be registered. (addConverter(Class class1, Converter
converter));
If a change like this will be made to the code I could provide my
"TableLayout extension pack (1 or 2 classes ;-))". I don't want to set up a
sourceforge project for this. Maybe it could be integrated into SwixML core?
Or better it could be commited to CVS under org.swixml.ext.tablelayout...
and make an extra jar of it in the build process so that it isn't uncluded
in the core jar file...?
If this is of interest for Wolf I could post some patches that show what I
mean. Sometimes code says more than words :-)
Marcel
http://www.netz-profis.de
