RE: [Springframework-rcp-dev] Cvs updates?

[Keith D. <kd...@cs...>]

Rich client early adopters:

A few updates:

- I've recently updated the action framework javadoc documentation tonite,
and will be continuing to do so over the weekend.  It should give you some
good background on the intended use of the framework, particularly see the
DefaultVisualAction class description.  I am planning to get the first
sample app check-ins this weekend as well.
 
	- The latest major action enhancement in CVS is the ability for the
framework to automatically track the active view in the application, and
trigger registration of local action handlers with global actions supported
by a particular view when that view is activated.  See the AbstractView
class for details--essentially view implementations must override
"registerGlobalActions" for hooking up handlers to each global action
supported by that view (delete, properties, save, etc.)  This method gets
called at the appropriate times in a view's lifecycle (on view creation and
activation, for example on setVisible(true) or focus gained.)  When a view
updates its local handler's enabled state, that change is automatically
reflected in the visual action and all places it may be 'clicked' in the GUI
(menu bar, tool bar, context menu, etc.)

	- Currently a perspective, a template for a page, only supports
displaying one view but this will be changing to support for multiple views
per page with a configurable page layout.  The goal is to use an existing
docking framework which allows for multiple views to be active and stacked
within the page area, dragged and dropped, etc - similar to Eclipse, but
built on Swing and more focused towards general rich client apps (as opposed
to say, IDEs)

Other stuff:

- Rod has changed the reply-to address for this mailing list to be "the
list" instead of our own personal email addresses--consistent with the other
spring lists.  This should make it easier to continue communication on the
list.

- After some good points made to me at TSS by other developers when
discussing spring-rcp and it's scope, we are contemplating a name change for
the framework, instead of "rich client platform", something with a more
Swing significance, since this framework really is built on Swing (as
opposed to say Eclipse, which is built on JFace/SWT and supports Swing as
kind of an aside.)  Also, there is some confusion about the "rich client",
as one of those buzzwords, meaning "thin client" (something like Flex or
Canoo ULC), where what we're developing is more client-side requiring a
client VM.

Any suggestions on a name?  What we certainly have is an abstraction or
framework around the base swing toolkit to support jumpstarting rich client
applications built on Swing/java, integrating with Spring and several other
open source projects (jgoodies-forms, likely l2prod's common components,
etc.).  Now what should we call that is the question...

Thanks to all the users so far trying out the framework; I'm excited the
list is starting to get more traffic to support enhancing the code base as
development actively progresses.

Keith

-----Original Message-----
From: Ronald Haring [mailto:em...@ro...] 
Sent: Sunday, May 23, 2004 10:46 AM
To: Keith Donald
Subject: Re: [Springframework-rcp-dev] Cvs updates?

And everything is up and running now, and I like what I see a lot. 
However, I vaguely recall reading in the list a message about how the 
handlers and actions are put together. Unfortunately I dont have that 
mail anymore. Do you still have that mail sent to the list? And if you 
do, could you send it to me and maybe add it to the confluence 
documentation of the spring-rcp?

As I went over the sources and tried to make it work I also noticed that 
you register some global actions (exit, about and help) are those 
necessary or just a remainder? Another thing that was hard is that I 
dont use an imagesource. Therefor I had to change some things in the 
application (simple check if imagesource was defined was sufficient), is 
it really necessary to have this imagesource bean?

Anyways, thanks for what you build so far.

Cheers
Ronald

Keith Donald wrote:

>Ronald,
>
>Those classes are in the spring sandbox.  You'll need to build the sandbox:

>
>'build sandboxjar'
>
>If you use the build.xml file in the spring-rcp root, it should compile
with
>the sandbox stuff.
>  
>