Nice to see some promotion for SwiXml. I have been using it for a few years now: rock stable, saves lots of programer time, much smaller than GUI-generator-generated code, more bang per line on screen makes for easier editing, use of Swing means no need to learn different concepts, can be extended with custom components: no downside that we have found at all, actually!
We do tend to keep major components as separate SwiXml components: so the menu bar is one SwiXml component and the button bar is a different one.
We use a naming trick for menus and buttons: each major subsystem has its own prefix, and a generic action listener dispatches the actions to each subsystem to be taken care of.
At one stage in programming history, one central method of developing systems was to first design optimal little languages to express each part. (This was particularly true in the LISP and UNIX worlds.) It became inefficient compared compared to components and OOP, largely because of the inefficiency of developing multiple syntaxes (and programmers lost the skill of working with multiple syntaxes.) XML allows the benefits of the little language approach again without the mental overhead of learning multiple syntaxes. (Contrast this with LISP: people compare XML and LISP as if it were about <> versus () when in fact in LISP you very often made your own syntax...fixed syntax versus homemade becomes the issue not () versus <>.)
SwiXml is also a great advertisement for the usefulness of reflection, btw!
Cheers
Rick |
java.net RSS Feeds
