RE: SWT History and Design Decisions (WAS: [platform-swt-dev] AWT Toolki

[Scott Stanchfield <scott@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Title: Message

I've got to totally disagree here... Round tripping is totally unnecessary if:

1. You have a well-separated design
2. You have a "good" UI builder (like the VCE in VisualAge for Java)
3. You use some good strategies in that UI builder.

I've written several UIs using VisualAge, and never had to tweak the code. It's all about MVC and proper use of a good tool...

-- Scott

-----Original Message-----
From: platform-swt-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:platform-swt-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Brad O'Hearne
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2003 6:30 PM
To: platform-swt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: SWT History and Design Decisions (WAS: [platform-swt-dev] AWT Toolkit using SWT (was: From Swing to SWT))

Regarding this point:

 

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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 "round trip" (convert source/object code into the representation used internally by the GUI builder).

---

 

I disagree from the standpoint that you *do* have to be able to round trip (but I don't think that this means parsing object code).  I think that visual presentation should be represented separately from the behavior via meta-data -- and from the little I know, this is the idea behind Conga.  If presentation is manipulated via a meta-data layer, then round-tripping should be fairly straightforward.  Moreover, it is the lack of round-tripping that make commercial GUI builders fairly useless for anything but a 1st draft skeleton model.

 

BradO

-----Original Message-----
From: platform-swt-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:platform-swt-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bob Foster
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2003 2:29 PM
To: platform-swt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: SWT History and Design Decisions (WAS: [platform-swt-dev] AWT Toolkit using SWT (was: From Swing to SWT))

So where's your GUI builder? (Or Scott's, for that matter? ;-)

 

I'm not seriously challenging that you could make one. I just want to look at the GUI builder that results.

 

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.

 

Bob

----- Original Message -----

From: Christian Gruber

To: platform-swt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx

Sent: Friday, January 17, 2003 1:08 PM

Subject: RE: SWT History and Design Decisions (WAS: [platform-swt-dev] AWT Toolkit using SWT (was: From Swing to SWT))

It’s entirely possible… it’s just that some designers make API, or at least paradigm assumptions about the GUI library they design with, and sometimes those assumptions are incompatible with an alternate GUI library.  I’m not sure this is the case in the mentioned systems, but it’s the only real impediment.  Building a natively SWT-aware builder is not particularly hard compared with another GUI library.

 

Regards,

Christian.

 

-----Original Message-----
From: platform-swt-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:platform-swt-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jan Venema
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2003 10:49 PM
To: platform-swt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: SWT History and Design Decisions (WAS: [platform-swt-dev] AWT Toolkit using SWT (was: From Swing to SWT))

 

Can sombody please explain to me why it is not possible to build a GUI designer in SWT.
I've been following the discussions here, but I haven't realy heard an answer. On the properties pattern thing. Does setData(String key, Object value)  solve your problem? And since SWT is native widgets How does Visual Studio do it?