NiceSTEP Java Components / News: Recent posts

The tutorial was long overdue for an update, so here it is. I have removed most Visual Age for Java information and given info on current IDEs. I have also described how to use the NiceCanonicalMenu (or at least explained which sample apps to study to understand how it works).

I have come to the conclusion that I have neither the time nor the ability to make NiceTextArea into a really good text editing control with word wrap. However, I have fixed the bugs in NiceScrollPane that prevented me from using it in combination with JTextArea for text editing. As a result, the whole world of Java Swing text editing, even formatted text editing and displaying web pages, is now available to NiceSTEP. In addtion to that, now you can create applications that use JTables and have the scrollbars placed where they truly belong.

NiceTextArea has been modified to add word-wrap and
tab support. In addition, the NiceCanonicalMenu
supports using a new Interface to create menu items
on the Services menu. Two classes implement
this interface so far: a word counter and a spell
checker that uses the ispell utility to provide
interactive spell checking and correction. Thus
NiceSTEP Editor and other apps that use NiceTextAreas and canonical menus can spell
check text.... read more

The latest NiceSTEP application lets you search LDAP directories by Common Name, select entries that you find, and export their data to a file in LDIF format. Among other things this lets you copy address book entries from Lotus Notes into the address book of GNUMail.app, the excellent GNUstep mail program. This utility, combined with GNUMail.app's ability to access Lotus Notes through IMAP makes GNUMail.app an excellent replacement for the Notes mail client.... read more

If you have been on Usenet recently you have probably noticed more and more binaries being encoded with the yEnc format. This format enables you to download more content with much less bandwidth, but the downside is that your news reader may not support decoding yEnc attachments. NiceSTEP yEnc Decoder enables you to decode yEnc encoded articles that have been saved as text files, so now you can get the binaries you have been missing. Most decoding utilities are command line tools, but NiceSTEP yEnc Decoder has an attractive an useable GUI with drag and drop and the great look of NeXTSTEP.... read more

NiceSTEP formerly was restricted to JDK 1.1.x features of Java because that was a limitation of the Visual Age for Java for Linux IDE I was using. I am now using Eclipse instead, which supports JDK 1.3, and this has given me the opportunity to improve printing, including more font choices, and to add features like drag and drop file management to NiceDirectoryNavigator and NiceListbox. This release also extends the application framework to make it easier to add your own menu options to the canonical menu and as usual it includes many bug fixes.

With release 4.0 NiceSTEP goes beyond being a simple set of widgets and takes its first tentative steps into being an application framework. The new component NiceCanonicalMenu and new interfaces in package nicestep.menu.interfaces form the basis of this framework. What it gives you is a menu that has the recommended format from the NeXTSTEP User Interface Guidelines already built and which allows you to add new menu items as needed. The procedure to use the menu is to implement the needed interfaces in your components and register them with the menu. In this way, for instance, Find/Replace and Cut/Copy/Paste menus are automatically supported when a text editing component that needs them gains the focus. Check out NiceSTEP Editor and SlideProjector to see examples of this framework in use.... read more

Another sample application has been added to NiceSTEP: a Java Tar/Zip utility that performs most of the functions of the popular WinZip utility but which is cross platform. This might simplify creating releases for your SourceForge project. Java Tar from http://trustice.com is required to run this utility.

NiceSTEP now has a tutorial, available in both postscript and pdf formats. The tutorial explains how to use NiceSTEP components to create your own applications and how to create your own lightweight Java components. Download either one from the project summary page.

With this latest release NiceSTEP can be considered feature complete. It includes a new component NiceScrollPane that manages JViewports like JScrollPane does and can be used to scroll Swing components like JTable and JTextArea, but with NiceScrollbars left and bottom. Since NiceSTEP components are lightweight you can use them to replace any Swing component you like with no ill effects. See the website for screenshots of the Sun demo SwingSet spiffed up with NiceSTEP components.... read more

With the addition of NiceChoice and NicePulldownButton NiceSTEP now has an equivalent to every java.awt component. Also, text editing can now be done with any font, not just monospaced fonts.

This is an important milestone because that means that now you can write any application that uses java.awt using only NiceSTEP components. And of course NiceSTEP includes standard dialogs and other components over and above what java.awt provides.

In the latest release of NiceSTEP all components are now lightweight. This improves performance and eliminates a source of platform specific bugs. Buttons on dialogs now accept the focus. New components include NiceDirectoryNavigator and NiceTextArea. A new sample application, NiceSTEP Editor is now included. Every dialog and application is very N*XT like in this release.

NiceSTEP Java Components, a set of Java Beans and standard dialogs that will help you create Java applications with the look and feel of NeXTSTEP, GNUstep, and WindowMaker, has a new release. New features include double buffering and optional tooltips for all components, more NeXT-like file and directory chooser dialogs, new app menus, and many bug fixes.