RE: [Sweet-swt-develop] Properties as Resources

[Joe W. <WIN...@uk...>]

Hi Dave,

>Sounds like there's a need for a FontManager class that the GUI builder 
is aware of and can use optionally in lieu of manually creating fonts.  In 
Sweet's parlance, this would be a custom font PropertyEditor that can 
interact >with a FontManager to generate the appropriate initialization 
strings for the individual GUI builder's code generator.

To me the problem sounds more like you just need to be able to point to a 
property value by name or by reference.  Usually a property editor comes 
up with a new color, font, etc...  That's what the BeanInfo spec basically 
enforces( it actually says explicitly that the property editor instance 
must be newed up each time ).  However some properties don't, for example 
an AWT Checkbox/checkboxGroup ( the whole point is to share one ), or 
Swing's JComponent/nextFocusableComponent ( that points to the next GUI 
element to tab onto ).  Others do come from other places such as strings 
from resource bundles, borders from factories, even in SWT color rather 
than new org.eclipse.swt.graphics.Color(display,255,255,255) you might 
want display.getSystemColor(SWT.COLOR_WHITE);

Whatever the solution, I think that rather than just solving Font with 
FontManager, it should be generic and basically address the fact that 
property values can come from other objects.  The FontManager is that 
objects, and the method used to access the font is the accessor.  In the 
case of FontManager being a class then you don't need to reference the 
instance by anything other than name ( two property values will get the 
same instance because the VM will ensure that ), however if it's something 
else that's part of the set of other objects ( i.e.an instance of a 
resource bundle ) then you need to be able to identify that specific 
instance not necessarily via a static.  The problem here is that you may 
be then getting into the issue of persistence, so right now I'm in two 
minds.  Do you just reference things by value and allow static class 
references, or do you allow anything more complex.

Best regards,

Joe