Re: NB Windows/Panel system

Gerry Steele wrote:
> Thanks Tim,
> 
> I wasn't aware you could use the netbeans as a platform.. I knew this
> was a big bonus of eclipse for some time.

Sigh.  People were building serious apps on top of NetBeans years before 
Eclipse existed.  IBM's marketing $$ at work...

Anyway, here's a very incomplete list of folks using NB as a platform:
http://www.netbeans.org/about/third-party.html


> Might a similar widget make it's way into Mustang as a swing component?

If you mean the tab control, I don't know of any plans to do that.  If 
you want to use it as a standalone component (I know other folks are), 
let me know.  You can build the basic jar as follows:

cvs -d:pserver:[email protected]:/cvs
cvs co core
cd core/swing/tabcontrol
ant -f build-standalone.xml beanjar
ant javadoc

will get you the jar file + docs (I worked pretty hard to make the 
javadoc obscenely comprehensive).

Let me know if you have any troubles - and this conversation *really* 
belongs on nbdev, not nbui.

What sort of thing are you writing?  We could give better suggestions re 
what you could use or whether NB as a platform is something that would 
help you knowing that.

-Tim


> 
> Gerry
> 
> On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 23:15:13 -0800, Tim Boudreau <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>>Gerry Steele wrote:
>>
>>>Hi,
>>>
>>>I've recently adopted Netbeans as my Java IDE of choice of all the
>>>various reasons. One of them is the very attractive and highly
>>>intuitive UI design style used.
>>>
>>>I've tried looking through a lot of the current netbeans docs I can't
>>>seem to find anything about using this same windowing system in other
>>>applications... or indeed if it can be used. In fact I can't seem to
>>>find very much on the implementation details at all.
>>>
>>>I am aware I could used the source but I would't have a clue were to start.
>>>
>>>Can anyone point me in the right direction??
>>
>>You probably want to ask this question on [email protected], which
>>covers developing applications on NetBeans.
>>
>>The tab control which does the basics is buildable as a standalone
>>library, but that doesn't get you persistence, drag and drop, etc (these
>>are implemented through listeners on the controls).
>>
>>Underlying that is the NetBeans windowing system.  That's what
>>implements the rest of the plumbing.  The API for it can be found in the
>>package org.openide.windows;  the actual implementation is in the
>>core/windows module - if you have a checkout of NetBeans sources, have a
>>look in core/windows.
>>
>>But the easiest way to reuse all of this (and more) is to build your
>>application on NetBeans (in other words, your app is NetBeans minus the
>>IDE-specific modules, plus your modules which implement what you want).
>>  This gets you menu/action and setting management and lots of other
>>stuff that can save years of development time in terms of getting a
>>large application up and running quickly.  Additionally there may be
>>NetBeans modules you can reuse for your own purposes.
>>
>>The platform by itself is quite small and starts quickly.  For a brief
>>overview, see
>>http://www.netbeans.org/products/platform/
>>
>>-Tim
>>
>>
> 
>