So where's your GUI builder? (Or Scott's,
for that matter? ;-)
On my desktop computer ;) I'm closing in on a point
where the code should start flowing quickly. I'm pretty confident that my
design is what I want/need it to be, and the prototyping I've been doing seems
to be backing that up. Hopefully I'll
get to a point where I can get some beta testers soon, then some initial
releases. BTW: I'm thinking of charging somewhere between $50-$100 USD for it.
I want to keep it affordable, but still make a little $ off
it...
I'm not seriously challenging that you
could make one. I just want to look at the GUI builder that results.
<g>
The issue isn't whether you can make a GUI
builder for SWT. You can make a GUI builder for any library...provided that
you don't have to "round trip" (convert source/object code into the
representation used internally by the GUI builder).
I know from previous discussion that Scott
thinks this is not a requirement. I also know that many commercial GUI
builders do allow round-tripping. Enough so that many would consider this a
competitive requirement.
Nope -- the trick here is to make sure that people
don't need to "tweak" the resulting code. It's all about making the separation
of concerns easy.
"Round tripping" actually depends on
interpretation:
- Round tripping generated
code
- Round tripping the "persisted form" of the UI being
designed
Because my builder will come with a persister that
generates XML, that XML can be hand modified if folks want. However, the code
generator I'll provide will ignore any "tweaks", overwriting
them.
I'll have a couple code generators -- one that
generates code similar to VisualAge for Java's style, and one that uses an XML
runtime loader to build the UI. (I'll probably be working with Frank Sauer to
set it up to use XMLTalk, possibly other
frameworks.)
If someone *really* wants round-tripped code, it'll
be completely possible for them to write a persister plugin for my builder
that will read/write the code. Because I don't believe this is a good idea, I
myself won't be doing it, but someone else could...
(Why don't I like "round tripping" code -- simple --
think about the maintenance programmer trying to find a bug. The last place he
thinks to look for that one bad line of handwritten code is in the generated
code...)
--Scott
