6 ms·

Swing is mostly fine. Ideologically, it's cousins with Qt. I don't think Swing's MVC strategy worked out. It was worth trying. But maybe 40%-50% of the framewo

Swing is mostly fine. Ideologically, it's cousins with Qt. I don't think Swing's MVC strategy worked out. It was worth trying. But maybe 40%-50% of the framework could be safely removed. Some kind of DSL would be nice. JavaFX ain't it. In my own noodling, Swing's UI component hierarchy needed to be refactored to be fully composable. By the time I created enough shims to make Swing truly composable, I wish I'd started from scratch. (I haven't done Swing work in ages, so maybe this happened.) An event loop is the biggest thing missing from Swing and other UI toolkits of that era. Meaning all modifications are handled by the framework, no client code (or non event loop threads) can modify the UI. My bestie George Smith's Juipeter (?) took the Win32 API approach, preserving the Swing API and all dispatch was handled under the hood. This is kinda how a browser's event loop is implemented. I much prefer an exposed event loop and Command objects. (It's easier to stepwise debug. Every desktop app I've ever created also had Undo/Redo; so you're gonna do Command objects one way or another.) And then make the framework pretty with some kind of DSL over the top. Sadly, though inspired, I think Swing's LookAndFeel plumbing proved unnecessary. Sun believed everyone who said it mattered. Maybe it did for a while. But the world moved on. I still have no firm opinions on how I'd make an app reskinnable. (I should probably look to see what Qt's doing these days.) Edit: I didn't mention AWT/Swing layout managers. Just peeked at Google/JetBrains Compose. Meh. I like that it uses Kotlin; less syntactic vinegar than Java. Alas, Compose repeats the mistake of not separating out the layout code. After doing way too much layout code -- some Australians did a hysterical GridBagLayout rage meme video, back in the day -- The Correct Answer[tm] is custom layout managers. Still include some stock managers in the JDK. And make the layout hooks API easier to implement and debug.

R0b0t1 6y ago
>Sadly, though inspired, I think Swing's LookAndFeel plumbing proved unnecessary. Sun believed everyone who said it mattered. It maybe it did for a while. But the world moved on. I still have no firm opinions on how I'd make an app reskinnable. (I should probably look to see what Qt's doing these days.) Well, if they didn't bake LookAndFeel in from the start, all of the work would fall on the application developer to manage these things. Having had to look into doing this the way they chose is the best way, what most people have a problem with is the UI didn't look fully native on most platforms for a long time.
- specialist 6y ago
  Agreed. I guess what I'm alluding to is something like CSS for desktop apps. I tried to tweak stock L&F a few times (not my choice) and I mostly failed. Back in the day, there was a guy, Sven?, that crafted amazing L&Fs. I dimly recall he had one that was easily customized.
  - cmiles74 6y ago
    I remember Karsten Lentzch working in this space on the JGoodies project. I used some of his custom look-and-feels in a couple of projects... I think the had some tools to make layout easier as well. http://www.jgoodies.com/home/about/ http://www.jgoodies.com/home/about/
    - specialist 6y ago
      Bingo! Thank you.
  - tpxl 6y ago
    > I guess what I'm alluding to is something like CSS for desktop apps. JavaFX supports CSS styling.
    - specialist 6y ago
      Right you are. Wiki says since 1.2. It looks pretty good. I just spotted JavaFX Script. Huh. This is almost directionally correct. So of course it got killed. If you're curious what The Correct Answer™ is, imagine VRML-97 reimplemented using JavaFX Script like syntax. Its wiki has a link to the Curl (programming language). That syntax is also directionally correct. But is also missing most of VRML's semantics. There's also a link to the F3 programming language, aka "form fits function". Great slogan. Alas. Looks like a misunderstanding of Conal Elliot's Fran functional reactive programming language. Oh well. Thanks for the tip. JavaFX's Script w/ CSS was about 1/2 the solution. Maybe someday someone will loop back and harvest the good bits.
  - ptx 6y ago

R0b0t1 6y ago

>Sadly, though inspired, I think Swing's LookAndFeel plumbing proved unnecessary. Sun believed everyone who said it mattered. It maybe it did for a while. But the world moved on. I still have no firm opinions on how I'd make an app reskinnable. (I should probably look to see what Qt's doing these days.) Well, if they didn't bake LookAndFeel in from the start, all of the work would fall on the application developer to manage these things. Having had to look into doing this the way they chose is the best way, what most people have a problem with is the UI didn't look fully native on most platforms for a long time.

specialist 6y ago
Agreed. I guess what I'm alluding to is something like CSS for desktop apps. I tried to tweak stock L&F a few times (not my choice) and I mostly failed. Back in the day, there was a guy, Sven?, that crafted amazing L&Fs. I dimly recall he had one that was easily customized.
- cmiles74 6y ago
  I remember Karsten Lentzch working in this space on the JGoodies project. I used some of his custom look-and-feels in a couple of projects... I think the had some tools to make layout easier as well. http://www.jgoodies.com/home/about/ http://www.jgoodies.com/home/about/
  - specialist 6y ago
    Bingo! Thank you.
- tpxl 6y ago
  > I guess what I'm alluding to is something like CSS for desktop apps. JavaFX supports CSS styling.
  - specialist 6y ago
    Right you are. Wiki says since 1.2. It looks pretty good. I just spotted JavaFX Script. Huh. This is almost directionally correct. So of course it got killed. If you're curious what The Correct Answer™ is, imagine VRML-97 reimplemented using JavaFX Script like syntax. Its wiki has a link to the Curl (programming language). That syntax is also directionally correct. But is also missing most of VRML's semantics. There's also a link to the F3 programming language, aka "form fits function". Great slogan. Alas. Looks like a misunderstanding of Conal Elliot's Fran functional reactive programming language. Oh well. Thanks for the tip. JavaFX's Script w/ CSS was about 1/2 the solution. Maybe someday someone will loop back and harvest the good bits.
- ptx 6y ago