Umm, have you guys seen SwiXML?
http://swixml.org/
-warner
On Aug 8, 2004, at 12:29 AM, Dennis Sosnoski wrote:
That's interesting to see, they're taking an approach similar to
something I've been planning. People have been trying for several
years now to come up with XML GUI designs for Java, along the lines of
Mozilla's XUL. I think that kind of approach is overkill for Java,
though, and that rather than trying to put the whole GUI description
(including actions and such) into an XML configuration, you'd be much
better off to just put the layout information there. The layouts are
about 90% of the pain in doing cross-platform GUIs anyway, at least in
my experience. It looks like Intellij is going further than I'd take
it, but that's typical of these visual layout tools. At least it's
cleaner than generating the GridBag garbage in code with // {<@
AUTOGENERATED CODE - DO NOT MODIFY tags around it.
My idea is to just do the layouts in an XML configuration, and do it
that way as a convenience to programmers who basically want to control
things themselves rather than using a D&D-type tool (so you still
create your active controls, only the passive containers and layouts
go into the XML; that way you can easily tweak the layouts without
recompiling, or even support multiple layouts depending on how
something is being used). Maybe I'll have an example for SWT by
September.
- Dennis
Tim Colson wrote:
How do they actually handle the layouts, if they're not generating
code?
Voodoo. :)
It's a black box... I visually created a .form in "XY space" (creates
an XML
file but "do not edit the file"), then you slap a "grid" on the
components,
bind the form to a class, add bindings for each component, create a
Jframe
and add the Form contentPane, and then during compile, et voila --
magic
fairies create the UI bits.
Some kind of configuration file that gets interpreted at runtime?
I recall seeing at JavaOne2003 a demo... and I thought they were
doing some
bytecode manipulation post-compile. But honestly, I'm ignorant of
what is
happening under the covers.
Heres an example of a simple form, one label, one text field, one
button,
some spacers, seems like they have a Grid layout, perhaps custom:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<form xmlns="http://www.intellij.com/uidesigner/form/"; version="1"
bind-to-class="com.cisco.hrit.Preferences">
<grid id="29ae7" row-count="3" column-count="3"
same-size-horizontally="false" same-size-vertically="false" hgap="-1"
vgap="-1">
<margin top="0" left="0" bottom="0" right="0"/>
<constraints>
<xy x="35" y="40" width="354" height="90"/>
<grid row="0" column="0" row-span="1" col-span="1"
vsize-policy="3"
hsize-policy="3" anchor="0" fill="3"/>
</constraints>
<properties/>
<border type="none"/>
<children>
<component id="65ed1" class="javax.swing.JTextField"
binding="nametext">
<constraints>
<xy x="62" y="0" width="186" height="21"/>
<grid row="0" column="1" row-span="1" col-span="1"
vsize-policy="0" hsize-policy="6" anchor="8" fill="1">
<preferred-size width="150" height="-1"/>
</grid>
</constraints>
<properties/>
</component>
<component id="a0d38" class="javax.swing.JButton"
binding="Apply">
<constraints>
<xy x="258" y="66" width="96" height="24"/>
<grid row="2" column="2" row-span="1" col-span="1"
vsize-policy="0" hsize-policy="3" anchor="0" fill="1"/>
</constraints>
<properties>
<text value="Apply"/>
</properties>
</component>
<component id="2e73" class="javax.swing.JLabel">
<constraints>
<xy x="0" y="3" width="52" height="14"/>
<grid row="0" column="0" row-span="1" col-span="1"
vsize-policy="0" hsize-policy="0" anchor="8" fill="0"/>
</constraints>
<properties>
<text value="Item Name"/>
</properties>
</component>
<hspacer id="64a7c">
<constraints>
<xy x="258" y="5" width="96" height="11"/>
<grid row="0" column="2" row-span="1" col-span="1"
vsize-policy="1" hsize-policy="6" anchor="0" fill="1"/>
</constraints>
</hspacer>
<vspacer id="535de">
<constraints>
<xy x="300" y="26" width="11" height="40"/>
<grid row="1" column="2" row-span="1" col-span="1"
vsize-policy="6" hsize-policy="1" anchor="0" fill="2"/>
</constraints>
</vspacer>
</children>
</grid>
</form>
Cheers,
Timo
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Dennis M. Sosnoski
Enterprise Java, XML, and Web Services
Training and Consulting
http://www.sosnoski.com
Redmond, WA 425.885.7197
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