JGoodies Forms

Hi -

I'm new to the forum, so please excuse me for being potentially 
redundant or just plain old ignorant.

I haven't even started using SwiXML but as this self selected crowd 
knows, presentation logic does NOT belong in code, so I'm already sold 
that using XML as the container for the presentation logic. I find it 
sad that a decade ago I could at least use .rc and a resource compiler 
for Windows apps, but there wasn't really something comparable for Java. 
Having to roll my own was not fun.

As others have mentioned, if possible, I'd also like access to code that 
would let JGoodies Forms be used as the layout manager. We have to make 
Java apps pretty and easy to develop! And that's where JGoodies Forms 
comes into play. In a a few short days, using FormLayout, I could do 
practically anything Sun's layout managers could do in a fraction of the 
time, and it was better looking. Nobody can tell me that using Gridbag 
is easy to use. The dirty little secret with Java apps is they're not as 
good looking as Windows/C++/native applications but there really is no 
reason why this has to be the case if you use JGoodies Forms (and, 
perhaps, JGoodies Looks).

Also (let me apologize in advance if it's easy for SwiXML can do this) - 
we need the ability to add extend the controls to do validation. For 
example, a text field should only be numeric, and the values range from 
1-9999. This does not belong in your code. Java 1.5 makes this easier to 
do, but even in 1.4 this is clearly doable with PlainDocument. I rolled 
my own for integers, double, dates, times.

Lastly - am I the only person who needs this? - I don't think the actual 
text for a control should be inside the XML file as done now. I am not 
an authority on XML, but my problem is that I need to support multiple 
languages and having to create identical XML files for each language is 
unacceptable. Why can't instead of Text="abcd" you using Text=$xxx (or 
whatever) and variable xxx is read from a Properties file? Not being 
able to do something like this is a deal breaker for me - it would be so 
painful to support. And even if one only has to support a single 
language, let's say you have to develop an application that uses "foo" 
for a control in 50 places, and your boss say "I want to to say 
"foobar"", what do you do? Wouldn't it be oh so nice to change just a 
single line in a Properties file?

-- 
Steve Buschman
22 Blackburnian Rd.
Lincoln, MA  01773
781-259-0295