I am interested in this theme very much, too.
I have been engaged in development of CAD/CAM system on Java for many years.
This StellaVision for Java
please look at http://www.stellacorp.co.jp/en/products/soft/java/index.htm
I investigate that I develop the next version based on JFX.
Tadashi Ohmura
(2013/07/24 8:21), Daniel Zwolenski wrote:
+1
More specifically I would like to know the official recommended best practices
for implementing a CAD style app in JFX.
- How best to represent large numbers of complex shapes efficiently, and when
to add shapes to the scene (add all and let jfx clip, or manually work out what
should be showing, etc)
- How best to handle font scaling and image scaling when rendered in a zoomed
in/out viewport
- How best to do panning and zooming with dynamic level of detail
- How best to do the top level display in terms of panes vs regions vs canvas,
vs whatever, how to manage overlays and layers (sharing same coordinate space,
etc)
- How best to do picking, mouse overs, dragging across the 'display'
- How best to do infinite or dynamic bounds so you can add and move shapes and
the scrolling adjusts accordingly.
A JFX diagramming app would make a very powerful demo app in my mind.
On 24/07/2013, at 1:47 AM, Chris Gay <chris.gay5...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello all.
Please could someone advise if it is even feasible for me to consider
re-factoring the following Swing application, so that it becomes a JavaFX one.
From trying to read about JavaFX, I get the feeling that Oracle never intended
Java FX for the purpose I need.
I have a large Java Swing desktop CAD application which makes heavy use of the
Java 2D API, and concurrency. It is a Menu Bar driven application, with a
Toolbar for Tools, and a few buttons, but 99% of the user activity concerns
selecting and manipulating vector graphical objects in a traditional manner
using one Tool at a time (think Inkscape or LibreOffice Drawing apps). The
application has multiple drawings open at the same time (but only one is
visible), and each Drawing contains it's own Drawing and Processing threads (in
addition to sharing the Main and Event Threads), which keeps the Event Thread
lively. Each Drawing contains an ArrayList, acting as a Display List of all
graphical objects, and each graphical object can be a tree structure. In many
cases I use simple iteration instead of Iterators, simply for speed, and to
avoid garbage. The graphical objects are lightweight, in that they do not carry
references to events and handlers. All they carry is their basic geometric data
and properties, a bounding box which they can lend as Read Only, and a boolean
flag to indicate selection, which means there can be millions of the objects,
with a minimum memory footprint. To support them, there are many hundreds of
methods, which the tools interact with. There can be multiple Drawing Windows
active on a single drawing, where each Window is backed up by an offscreen
image, which handles the zoom and sliding buffer behaviour for fast scrolling,
to allow rapid bit-blt's to the actual window. Lastly, the user manipulates the
Drawing (Display List), using one of many Tools, where the active Tool receives
events from the event queue, and then manipulates selected and/or unselected
graphical objects, by using XOR Mode graphics onto the offscreen buffer,
generally using callbacks.
The system is fast and very responsive on large data sets, but what I do not
know is whether JavaFX will help me make a better implementation, or whether it
will fight me all the way. With JavaFX claiming hardware acceleration, I do not
understand whether it depends on transferring the very large data sets into
graphics hardware to render, and what happens if the hardware cannot cope. So
far, I have found little in the way of discussions that help me get a mental
picture of how JavaFX is intended to work. Should I stick with Swing?
Regards,
Chris
