[Visualswing-developers] New proposal to feature list

[Timo H. <tim...@ko...>]

Hi all,

I joined a few weeks ago to this project. I am from Windows environment and not so
familiar to open source development (escpecially not familiar in co-operation that is needed in
open source development) but want to learn.

I have another project to which I was planning to develop same kind of GUI development tools. 
However, I joined this project because wanted to help with visual swing project and learn more 
how to build GUI editors. There was also idea that perhaps we can share some code between 
projects.

However, when thinking more, I was wondering might it be possible to use visual swing like 
"plugin" in another software. So, there should not be necessary need to build another GUI builder.

To be honest, for my personally it would be nice if visual swing can be
implemented as "Java Bean" or so that it can be added  e.g. to JPanel (I
mean that visual swing is e.g. derived from JComponent and can be added e.g.
to the JPanel). It should be also possible to "start" visual swing from the main-method like
any other normal stand-alone java application as planned earlier.

What do you thing about this kind of idea?

It would be great if visual swing can be integrated to another softwares, but if this idea is 
not ok for others, it is great for me to help with visual swing project and learn more with it.

I have also some comments to Scott's mail:

        Although I was wondering if we might also consider possibly an XML
        definition of elements (ala XUL) so that a user might develop (for example)
        custom panels that could be added to the palette of choices.
        (This also assumes that can store user creations in an XML format that we can read in.
         + 1 for "Persistent data saved as xml")

This sounds good. I think it would be nice to add also possibility to add "any" elements to the
palette of choices. So that user can develop any kind of complex componets (including nested
panels/components) e.g. also using another development tools and add those to the palette of choices. 

        I'd like to know if a use case for the project is to allow the user to
        create something as complex as the UI that we develop for this project?
        If so, I think layouts are a requirement.

My opinion is that layouts are required and it should be possible to develop a quite complex UIs with visual swing.

        The only problem that I have with
        that is that absolutely positioned and absolutely sized elements in
        Swing tend to not resize well when the user changes his/her window size.
        (Please note: I'm coming from a Swing-centric UI background.)

I agree. I was wondering is it possible to use e.g. new SpringLayout but I haven't found much examples about this
layout from the web. Some times ago I was thinking might it be possible to predefine (=draw by development tool=>by visualswing) 
"forms" which are like panels with own layout and predefined places for components. User might then be able 
to drag and drop components from the palette to the predefined places on the form and components will be automatically
resized on the correct places. User should be possible to create new forms and define rules between "places" of components
so that when resized, the forms and components in it are resized based on those rules. (like in SpringLayout).

But, probably this is too far compared to the original ideas. 

Thanks, 
Timo