[Visualswing-developers] Proposed Feature List and Description

[Scott C. <sc...@mi...>]

On 20-06-2003, a brief features list was distributed to the developer's
mailing list.  Although not much in the way of response has been made, I
thought we could flesh out more details regarding that list and
hopefully post the new features list on the website.
 
GUI view - 
A>    Will allow a user to develop Graphical User Interfaces with Java's
Swing library.  
B>    Will support the Layout Managers provided for in the Swing and AWT
libraries.
C>    Will support GUIs created using no Layout Manager and absolutely
positioned/sized components.
D>    Will provide the usage of all Swing containers and other
components to build a GUI.
E>    Will also allow the user to create template components that may be
added to a GUI like any other standard Swing components.  
F>    Will allow the user to set all component properties and add Event
Listeners to components.
 
File formats -
A>    Will generate .java files for the GUI created.
B>    Will generate .class files for the GUI created.
C>    Will generate some other internal format (most likely XML) which
will allow the components created to be added to the set of usable
components.
D>    Will read .java files for existing GUI (whether created by the
tool or not).
E>    Will read existing files in our internal format. 
 
Code view - 
A>    Should incorporate a text editor to allow the user to edit Java
code manually to manipulate the GUI as well as through the GUI view.
(Whether we are going to author our own text editor or act as a plug-in
to a project with an existing text editor is undecided.)
 
 Please review and comment on the points listed above.  
 
Personally, I would like to see the first release attempt to fulfill all
of the GUI View and File Format items.  
 
Scott Corley