Re: FormLayout & Swixml Marriage

kate rhodes wrote:
> I don't' want way beyond layout... I also don't want XUL. I just want to 
> define all my swing widgets in XML
 >...

Something I have considered, but not done any work on, is what I call in 
my little head "SwiM: Models for Swing."  It could either be a new 
project, or a 'sister' project to Swix, in the sense that one or both of 
the projects knows about the other.

When Wolf and others quite rightly beat down crazed attempts (including 
my own) to make Swix more than layout, it set me thinking about how to 
go about things a different way, but still keeping the same great style 
Swix has.

SwiM, then, at the very least, should provide a way to initialize a set 
of components.  That would then mimic Swix:  Set up, then get out of the 
way.  Two ways I could see to do this:

- Tie into Swix and its parsing process, perhaps with a <model> tag, and 
component-specific entries underneath.  Sadly, I haven't followed recent 
Swix happenings as closely as I'd like, so I can't say how possible this is.
- Make a SwimEngine, that can work with a SwingEngine.  Use a separate 
XML file, but the same IDs.  This would require a second step in users' 
programs, however.

Is anyone interested in something like this?  I could probably whip 
something up pretty quickly...

> as for plug-in architectures there's actually a generic plug-in 
 > architecture project on sourceforge that a friend of mine's working
 > on.

Can you provide more details for this?  I've been thinking about rolling 
my own for the sake of mental excercise, but this could get me off the 
ground more quickly...

As for Swix with plugins, it would be kind of cool to be able to 
dynamically specify the plugin that handles a tag.  For example:
<unkown-tag supported-by="com.whatever.NewSwixTags"/>.  This would allow 
easier cut-and-paste of gui code.  You wouldn't have to register tags in 
code.

Pat.