Re: Swing pluggable application framework to use Swixml

Thanks Warner for the introduction.

I am interested in moving forward on this project
right away. I am going to download and start
integrating swixml as the UI builder for the pluggable
UI framework right away. I don't forsee too many
problems, other than figuring out how to allow plugins
to utilize the swixml xml. I am not sure yet if plugin
developers will find it a pain in the arse to generate
a separate "ui" xml file to add UI elements to the
application or not, but I am hoping to allow a
programatic approach as well, thus not enforcing this
on them. The main purpose of the use of xml is that at
plugin load time, the swixml plugin can render the as
much UI as possible without creating any plugins, thus
eliminating startup delays and added resource usage
that may never be used. The goal here is that a plugin
is "lazily" created, and in the context of a UI
framework, all UI adding plugins should not be created
until their menuitem/toolbar button (or some other
trigger) is first used, and only at that point are
they created. Until then, they stay in a state of
"new".

I haven't seen any emails on this list, is this
generally a quiet list?

How far along is Swixml, in that it is pretty stable?
Are there a lot of changes planned? Perhaps more
components to be added?

Thanks.


--- [email protected] wrote:
> For those of you who don't know Kevin Duffey (not
> sure why your email 
> addy didn't show), he is running the project that
> Kate and I have 
> mentioned.
> 
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/genpluginengine
> 
> -warner
> 
> On Tuesday, December 23, 2003, at 10:55 AM,
> [email protected] 
> wrote:
> 
> > Hi all,
> >
> > This would be my first post to this group. I'll
> give a
> > brief background of what we are working on and
> more
> > detail of how we would like to try to use Swixml
> if
> > possible, with a few questions that hopefully some
> on
> > the list can answer.
> >
> > I have been developing a generic plugin engine
> similar
> > to the eclipse engine, only smaller in scope and
> > features, although still a very capable and
> powerful
> > engine. In a nutshell, it allows any application,
> gui
> > or not, to add a very small 50K (presently) jar
> that
> > gives the application immediate pluggable
> > capabilities. The engine supports dynamic
> > load/unload/reload of plugins at runtime,
> automatic
> > dependency resolution at load time of each plugin,
> > works on the premise of extension points and
> > extensions like Eclipse only not as robust (no xml
> > schema support, but dynamic xml is supported),
> adds an
> > event/listener automatic configuration, and each
> > plugin can be an exploded directory or in its own
> > plugin archive file complete with embeddable
> libraries
> > that do not have to be unzipped to be used. You
> can
> > add specific plugin class types to be allowed
> loaded,
> > specify different file extensions for plugin
> archive
> > files, multiple URL locations to find plugins at
> and
> > (eventually) auto-watch locations for updates. The
> > engine is highly configurable, has an embeded xml
> pull
> > parser and presently the size is 54K (with debug
> > info).
> >
> > Now to the usage with Swixml. I am also very
> > interested in providing a highly reusable Swing UI
> > framework built around my plugin engine, so that
> any
> > developer using it can quickly add plugins that
> extend
> > existing extension points and get immediate reuse
> of
> > several components as well as the UI framework
> which
> > will provide menuitem/toolbar button integration,
> > hopefully a "perspective" paradigm where by a
> button
> > can be configured to "switch" views/editors on
> screen,
> > and if all goes well, a tabbable drag/drop window
> > hierarchy where by every window is derived from
> our
> > internal window types so they can easily be
> > dragged/dropped onto one another to form a
> tabbable
> > layout like Eclipse IDE does. This also allows the
> app
> > to use MDI or SDI at will.
> >
> > Presently I have a "core" UI plugin that provides
> > menuitem/toolbar button integration so that any
> plugin
> > can provide a bit of dynamic xml that specifies
> the
> > menu name, the path, the Action class in the
> plugin to
> > handle clicks, etc. This works great, but it means
> I
> > have a lot of work to render the UI still.
> >
> > What I was hoping is somehow to use Swixml in a
> manner
> > to render the UI. What I need the ability to do is
> > provide my "proxy" event listener that is added to
> ALL
> > menu items and toolbar buttons so that when first
> > clicked my special proxy code is able to figure
> out
> > the plugin that provided the menuitem or toolbar
> > button, grab its action listener class, create it
> > (thus creating the plugin at that time) and then
> > forward the event on to the plugin's action
> listener
> > class. More so, it then "replaces" the proxy
> listener
> > at that time with the now created plugin listener
> > class. From then on all clicks go directly to the
> > plugin handling it.
> >
> > My thought is wrapping the swixml.jar and each
> plugin
> > would then provide a second .xml file for Swixml.
> > Somehow my swixml plugin wrapper has to take the
> > provided swixml xml for each plugin, pass that to
> > swixml to render the UI but "intercept" the
> handler
> > class passed to swixml and ALWAYS pass it's own
> proxy
> > actionlistener.
> >
> > Is this sort of thing possible, and if so, can you
> > provide some example code perhaps on how in code I
> > would set the action listene class of a menu item
> or
> > toolbar button?
> >
> >
> > Lastly, my UI framework is to provide a number of
> > components, such as a new file chooser dialog,
> wizard
> > component, help system (JavaHelp), preference
> dialog
> > and other widgets (outlook style task bar, status
> bar,
> > etc). Is there a way that swixml allows
> integration of
> > components to be used such that defining them
> within
> > swixml xml files is possible?
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
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> 
> 
> 
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