Andreas Müsing - 2018-11-19

The current version of GeckoCIRCUITS is pretty stable. However, in the last 1-2 years, there were not too many improvements, and the following list was collected as a wish-list:

  • The latest JDK / JRE version that I did test extensively was Java 8. If anyone did use GeckoCIRCUITS with Java 9, please let me know. Also please let me know if you find any specific problems with new Java releases
  • GUI / High resolution screens. The current Swing user interface with the self-made "vectorgraphic" representation of the circuit sheet is suboptimal. In particular, since high resolution screens are getting more and more common. I did experiment with Piccolo2D in the past as a drawing alternative. However, piccolo seems to be dead since a while. JavaFX is possibly now good enough to be used. But probably, I will not find the time to export the whole graphics part (drawing of all Resistors, inductors, etc.) in JavaFX... or are there better options? Possibly a solution in combination with a rich client platform (e.g. Netbeans platform or Eclipse platform)?
  • Component library: THE missing feature in GeckoCIRCUITS is a custom component library, i.e. that the users can build their own circuit blocks and store them to their reusable library.
  • .ipes file format: I think the original file format is quite screwed. However, it was quite stable in the last years, and there are probably thousands of model files at different universities. Therefore, just starting with a new file format (without import) would be a bad idea. On the other hand, the new open-source release is probably also a good starting point for a better (and open?) model file format?
  • And finally: I think Java is not anymore the best choice for the whole project. Java is not bad, but programming languages evolved over time. Java also evolved, but still it has to be backwards-compatible and does not allow for the latest advances in programming. I have done a port of GeckoCIRCUITS in Scala. However, Scala has other drawbacks. Then, Kotlin came up. My impression is that Kotlin would be the best replacement for Java. My existing Scala code (ask me for it if you like to have it) could be the basis for a software architecture in Kotlin. Up to now, the GeckoCIRCUITS project was done with Netbeans (most important: Swing Gui-builder). Nowadays, IntelliJ would be my choice.