[ANN] JFormDesigner Plugin Early Access 3

Excellent work! It makes fun creating GUIs with JFormDesigner, especially
since it is available as a IDEA plug-in. :)

Unfortunately, it does not support our work-flow (or I did not found it):
- we create JTables with QSortedTable.createInstance(tableModel)
- ditto for JScrollPanes: QTableScrollPane.createFixedSizeInstance(table) or
- the components are returned by other objects: nameEditor.getLabe() and
nameEditor.getInputField()

Just curious, is it possible now to make columns/rows *from different
panels* as equal wide/high? If you like, you can take a look at our
VisualLayout plug-in from
:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/visuallayout . After
installing the plug-in, open the class VLLayoutForm, select the panel
instance in the createGridComponent() method and click "Tools|Lay Out
Visually". Of course this does not compare to JFormDesigner or even IDEA's
GUI builder, but it works for us at the moment. If JFormDesigner (or IDEA's
GUI builder) would support something like that, we would like to use this
instead of our solution.

Thanks,
Tom

Hi, LAF probles is solved? ;)

Besides a very pleasant integration I've found one minor problem:

Your plugin isn't aware of package prefixes. If I create a form in package c which is prefixed by a.b, then the corresponding class file is set to package c instead of a.b.c - the same is true for the location of property files.

Hi Tom,

Excellent work! It makes fun creating GUIs with
JFormDesigner, especially
since it is available as a IDEA plug-in. :)

Thanks ;)

Unfortunately, it does not support our work-flow (or
I did not found it):
- we create JTables with
QSortedTable.createInstance(tableModel)
- ditto for JScrollPanes:
QTableScrollPane.createFixedSizeInstance(table) or
- the components are returned by other objects:
nameEditor.getLabe() and
nameEditor.getInputField()

Well, JFormDesigner does not yet support component factories, but you could e.g. use a JTable in the design view and set the "Custom Creation Code" property to QSortedTable.createInstance(tableModel).

Just curious, is it possible now to make columns/rows
*from different
panels* as equal wide/high?

No, because none of the layout managers supported by JFormDesigner provide this feature...

If you like, you can take
a look at our
VisualLayout plug-in from
:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/visual
ayout . After
installing the plug-in, open the class VLLayoutForm,
select the panel
instance in the createGridComponent() method and
click "Tools|Lay Out
Visually".

I'll try it. Does it use a custom layout manager to synchronize column/row sizes of different panels?

Karl

Hi, LAF probles is solved? ;)

Yes (already in EA2) ;)

Besides a very pleasant integration I've found one
minor problem:

Your plugin isn't aware of package prefixes. If I
create a form in package c which is prefixed by a.b,
then the corresponding class file is set to package c
instead of a.b.c - the same is true for the location
of property files.

Thanks for reporting. Not only the plugin isn't aware of package prefixes. I was it too ;)

I'll fix it in the next release.

Karl

Don't know what LAF problems you're referring here. But I'm using EA3
and my IDEA LAF get's confused when changing LAF in JFormDesigner... :(


Karl Tauber wrote:
>> Hi, LAF probles is solved? ;)

Yes (already in EA2) ;)

--
Martin Fuhrer
Fuhrer Engineering AG
http://www.fuhrer.com

Don't know what LAF problems you're referring here.

If using look and feel "IDEA (4.5 default)" then
JFormDesigner EA1 changed the look of Idea to Metal.
This and some other look and feel issues have been fixed in EA2.

But I'm using EA3
and my IDEA LAF get's confused when changing LAF in
JFormDesigner... :(

Well, if you use one of the Alloy themes for Idea and
switch to another Alloy theme in JFormDesigner, then it
also affects Idea dialogs.

Is this what you noticed?

Seems that Alloy uses a static variable to store the
current Alloy theme. Therefore it is not possible for
JFormDesigner to solve this issue. However I will remove
the Alloy themes, except the current one, from the
JFormDesigner look and feel combobox in the next release
to avoid this problems.

Karl

>> But I'm using EA3
>> and my IDEA LAF get's confused when changing LAF in
>> JFormDesigner... :(

Well, if you use one of the Alloy themes for Idea and
switch to another Alloy theme in JFormDesigner, then it
also affects Idea dialogs.

Is this what you noticed?

Yes, basically that's it. But the most annoying part is that I can't
restore the IDEA theme. When switching back to IDEA theme the last
selected Alloy theme is used instead.

Seems that Alloy uses a static variable to store the
current Alloy theme. Therefore it is not possible for
JFormDesigner to solve this issue. However I will remove
the Alloy themes, except the current one, from the
JFormDesigner look and feel combobox in the next release
to avoid this problems.

Quite an excessive bugfix... :)
I wouldn't mind about the issue if restoring the IDEA theme would work.
Then I think I would prefer having the other themes around.

--
Martin Fuhrer
Fuhrer Engineering AG
http://www.fuhrer.com

This is fixed in EA4.

Karl

Restoring the IDEA Alloy theme works now in EA4.

Karl

Restoring the IDEA Alloy theme works now in EA4.

Great! I'll give it a try tomorrow.

By the way:
Isn't it possible to create a ButtonGroup as a field instead of a local variable? Sometimes it's more convenient to work with the ButtonGroup than with the single buttons. (Sorry for being off topic.)

Isn't it possible to create a ButtonGroup as a field
instead of a local variable? Sometimes it's more
convenient to work with the ButtonGroup than with the
single buttons. (Sorry for being off topic.)

Not yet, but you're not the first one who asked for this feature... coming soon ;)

Karl