OK, now I get it. Groovy allows you to do something similar. However, I believe
this approach requires creating "builder" classes, correct? BXML offers a
similar capability, but without the need for builders:
<Window>
<BoxPane>
<Label text="here's a Label inside a BoxPane inside a Window"/>
</BoxPane>
</Window>
You can also define event listeners in BXML.
However, I see value in both approaches, I think a Scala builder library would
be a great addition to the platform. By all means, please consider submitting
it if you would like.
On Dec 21, 2010, at 12:42 AM, Gilbert, Clint wrote:
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Greg Brown [[email protected]]
> Sent: Monday, December 20, 2010 8:54 PM
> To: calathus
> Cc: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [pivot] are there any tools to convert bxml to Java?
>
>> Also if we may really have declarative GUI design, using Scala may be more
>> attractive way. Scala would allow declaring GUI in equivalent code side as
>> BXML.
>
> I'm not sure how this would work. Scala is conceptually more akin to Java
> than markup. Could you elaborate?
>
>
> I've been moving a Pivot project of mine bit-by-bit from Java to Scala, so I
> think I know what he's getting at here. Scala makes nice-looking,
> declarative DSLs possible. I'm not familiar with BXML, but I'm guessing you
> can declare things like: "here's a window and here's what it contains". A
> Scala DSL for this might look like
>
> val window = Window {
> BoxPane {
> new Label("here's a Label inside a BoxPane inside a Window")
> }
> }
>
> I have a very small Scala lib to allow syntax like:
>
> val component = new Button("Hello")
>
> button onClick {
> println("You clicked the button!")
> }
>
> and
>
> val container = new BoxPane
>
> container += new Label("A label")
>
> and
>
>
> val label = new Label("A label")
> val widget = new SomeWidget
>
> container ++ (label, widget)
>
> etc.
>
> It's extremely rudimentary, but if anyone's interested I can share it with
> the list.
