Re: Refection vs Code Generation

Yes as Kate said, background="WHITE" works for sure,
background="Color.WHITE" does not (by the way - background="xxx, xxx,
xxx" works also.)
Because SwixML includes the Color class as a constant provider, all
predefined colors will work this way.
Have a look at PrimitiveConverter.java to see all included providers.

If you have special needs you can always register a new provider like:

    PrimitiveConverter.addConstantProvider(Font.class);

.. and use PLAIN, BOLD, ITALIC, ...

If you want to use system colors (as I do), try the following:

import javax.swing.*;

import org.jdom.Attribute;
import org.swixml.Localizer;
import org.swixml.converters.ColorConverter;

/**
 * Extends SwixMLs ColorConverter to use system colors.
 * 
 * @author Lutz Neumann
 */
public class ExtColorConverter extends ColorConverter
    {
    public Object convert(Class type, Attribute attr, Localizer localizer)
        {
        if (attr.getValue().startsWith("UIColor."))
            {
            return UIManager.getColor(attr.getValue().substring(8));
            }
        if (attr.getValue().startsWith("Color."))
            attr.setValue(attr.getValue().substring(6));
        return super.convert(type, attr, localizer);
        }
    }

Register it with:

        ConverterLibrary.getInstance().register(Color.class, new ExtColorConverter());

Now you can use foreground="UIColor.activeCaptionText",
background="UIColor.Button.background", etc. - even "Color.WHITE"
works ;-).

Hope this helps,

-Lutz



> I agree about extending attributes needing to be more obvious. I think 
> this is mostly a documentation issue although I haven't actually tried it.

> The biggest problem with things like new  Color(xxx, xxx, xxx) as an 
> attribute value is that there are just too many possibilities that 
> people would want  and too little time to code them all. I think the 
> best approach is to do the main ones (see below) and just really 
> document how to extend it. Plus get this all the things like this into a 
> plug-in archictecture (old discussion see archives) so that we can all 
> contribute our little bits to the whole.

> While Color.WHITE may not work I *think* that WHITE does. I think all 
> the Color.xxx have been implemented.  But, it's been a while since I 
> tried that I just remember it working and not having to specify hex vals.

> -Kate