Re: Can your GUI framework do this?

Martin DeMello wrote:

Yes, but my point was, can you define your own Layout in ruby?

Yes you can define a new Swing layout manager with 100% Ruby code, just as you can do most anything doable in Java from JRuby.  I would say though, that is is highly unlikely that you would need to do so.  There are a great variety of layout managers and most are pretty sophisticated, I surely wouldn't take on writing a non-trivial one myself.  If you are looking for a very flexible layout manager designed for people doing layouts by hand I'd suggest the MiG layout manager (http://www.miglayout.com/).  You can see the author's presentation at this year's Java One here: http://developers.sun.com/learning/javaoneonline/2008/pdf/TS-4928.pdf

Martin DeMello wrote:

> You _could_ write Java if you wanted, but we haven't run into occurrences
> where Java (the language) is needed. You could write all of your designs by
> hand in Ruby, which is fine. My preferred approach is to use a designer
> tool, such as Netbeans.
> Do you really want to lay something like this out by hand?
> http://www.happycamperstudios.com/monkeybars/charlotte%20interface.png

Actually, I do :) My preferred approach is to build widgets from the
bottom up, so that if I want to experiment with the layout later I can
do it easily in the code. Does netbeans use the "interface definition
file" approach or does it generate actual code from your UI?

Netbeans generates straight Java code, which you normally would never need to touch.  As for building a widget from the "bottom up" do you have any examples?  I've built several "widgets" using the graphical deisgner.  In Swing they tend to be JPanel + some components + logic (the logic of course would all be in Ruby) which makes the visual designer even more useful.  If you're doing a super custom component involving doing your own drawing, that is accomplished easily enough in straight Ruby code.  In either of these situations I fail to see how having a visual designer in any way slows you down.

David