[Rails-devel] Swing Docking Framework for Rails

[Frederick W. <fre...@go...>]

I've done some internet research for finding the "best" LGPL Swing
docking framework, which appears to be DockingFrames. Based on that
framework, I developed a very small prototype that puts that OR Window
on the docking framework.

Instead of pushing to prototype to the dev branch, I attached it as
patches so that you can have a look at this technology.

In any case, I think we need to have a strong buy-in by everyone
before being able to move to this framework.

-- Frederick

===============
Details: DockingFrames
===============

Links:
- Homepage: http://dock.javaforge.com/
- Javadoc: http://dock.javaforge.com/dockingFrames_v1.1.0/doc/index.html
- Examples: http://dock.javaforge.com/help.html
- Forum: http://forum.byte-welt.de/forumdisplay.php?f=69&langid=2

Key advantages (at the first glance)
- LGPL
- Allows for both
   - convenient access to docking functionality ("common" jar")
       -> easy to start with (see prototype)
   - deep configurability ("core" jar)
       -> easy to adapt to future more sophisticated requirements
- Rich feature set

===============
Details: Prototype
===============

Implementation:
- added just about 20 lines to ORWindow
- had to suppress triggering ORWindow revalidation as the docking
framework takes care of that

First findings:
- dockables can be detached from their master frame
   -> finally, the OR panel can be put somewhere else
- Stefan will like the docking tooltips - others probably not... ^_^
   - but should be no issue to find out how to set them to English