Re: SV: GUI components creation idioms

Separating the layout from code and from constructing the components is an 
interesting idea. It is related to the need of having the UI defined 
declaratively, separated from the code. It allows for better reusability and 
independence of the UI on its actual implementation. Your concept is a bit 
different in that you suggest to separate (reuse) just the layout and have all 
the components created by your own. I can imagine this can be quite useful for 
some types of application, but it is different from the current style the GUI 
builder works (you would like to change it to a layout designer where the 
components would be just placeholders). Also providing some proprietary 
runtime libraries is not something we would like to introduce... that would 
have to be done differently.

So - while we think about supporting the declarative UI in future, and also 
about reusing layout separately from components, we don't plan this for the 
nearest release.

   - Tomas


Christian Hessenbruch wrote:
> http://www.netbeans.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=67764 
> 
> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
> Fra: Christian Hessenbruch [mailto:[email protected]] 
> Sendt: 2. oktober 2006 09:42
> Til: [email protected]
> Emne: SV: [nbui] GUI components creation idioms
> 
> I've allready made a suggestion on this list that IMHO could be a
> perfect solution to this problem. What I suggested was that the Mattise
> team created a parser, that at runtime can parse the .form xml-file, and
> whenever it encountered a component, it should ask a factory provided by
> the client to create it. That way it would be much easier to develop
> thin clients using Matisse.
> 
> I think the automatically generated java files are fine for prototyping,
> but for real scaleable programs it would be much better just using the
> xml files establishing the gui runtime. That would enable the client to
> do the binding itself (maybe using a binding framework), only leaving to
> Matisse what it goes best - layout.
> 
> Could someone from the Matisse-team verify if such a parser is beeing
> considered?
> 
> Best Regards,
> 
> Christian
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
> Fra: Gregg Wonderly [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sendt: 2. oktober 2006 06:50
> Til: [email protected]
> Emne: Re: [nbui] GUI components creation idioms
> 
> 
> 
> King Lung Chiu wrote:
>> Hi again,
>>
>> Usually when I create a form, there are multiple components of the 
>> same type, eg. 5 combo boxes, or 5 text fields, and Netbeans creates a
> 
>> new variable for each of those components.
>>
>> I'd like to have them created as items in a data structure (eg. an 
>> array or ArrayList or HashMap of combo boxes),to make it easier to 
>> reference them later. Is there an automatic way to do that?
>>
>> My current workaround is to create the data structure myself (eg.
>> EnumMap<FieldAttribute, JTextField>), and manually add the components 
>> to that data structure in each comopnent's post-creation code (in this
> 
>> case, maping each component to its corresponding enum value). However,
> 
>> this method doesn't scale when I have a large number of components to 
>> add. (lots of code copy + paste + small-edit).
> 
> In this case, I don't use Matisse to create such panels. I write all the
> helper methods and do all of the layout by hand using tools like my
> Packer
> (http://packer.dev.java.net) layout manager which provides a friendlier
> interface to GridBagLayout.
> 
> public int makeFields( EnumMap<FieldAttribute,JTextField> map,
> 		FieldAttribute[] flds, Packer pk, int y ) {
> 	for( int i = 0; i < flds.length; ++i ) {
> 		// See
> http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=98193
> 		// for more information on what its ++y and not y++
> here.
> 		pk.pack( new JLabel(flds[i].desc) ).gridx(0).gridy(++y);
> 		JTextField fld;
> 		pk.pack( fld = new JTextField( flds[i].default )
> 			 ).gridx(1).gridy(y).fillx();
> 		map.put( flds[i], fld );
> 	}
> 	return y;
> }
> 
> public void init() {
> 
> 	... some initialization ...
> 
> 	JPanel fldPan = new JPanel();
> 	Packer fldPk = new Packer( fldPan );
> 	int y = makeFields( map, flds, fldPk, -1 );
> 
> 	... more initialization ...
> }
> 
> You can use Matisse for other things, and then just add such a
> mechanically generated panel into an empty panel that is a place holder
> created in matisse.
> 
> Gregg Wonderly