User Interface Builder Proposal

• List of Java GUI builders
• clear article on what it takes to GUIbuild
• Visual Editor Eclipse plug-in
• jvider -- commercial
• Jigloo -- commercial
• Glade -- builds XML, but presumes GTK widgets; could maybe do something with Lightweight AOP Python
• Luxor -- XUL toolkit -- looks like it interprets XUL, but XUL might be a good starting point. Is there a graphical XUL builder?
• jxmlguibuilder XML to Java, but in German just beyond my capabilities
• Java Gui Builder (JGB) XML to Java -- minimal documentation, minimal activity, stuff looks abandoned

Aspectized GUI Builder

Team members: Sukesh Chopra, Sebastian Streg, Kaitlin Duck Sherwood (Ducky)

Project overview: We will develop an aspectized GUI builder, allowing users to drag and drop interface widgets onto a canvas, then reposition/size them and edit their properties. Users will also be able to export the interface as Java code. While we do not expect to convert an existing code base, we might look to existing GUI builders for inspiration.

The GUI will be aspectized. This means that both

• the code that draws the GUI components will use AspectJ and AOP techniques instead of the traditional event-based mechanism, and
• the code that the GUI builder spits out will be AspectJ code (instead of vanilla Java code).

• @@@ tool will input AspectJ code? Where?

We will probably not do a great deal of design of the user interface, instead borrowing layout and features from existing GUIs. Jvider and Glade, for example, both have reasonable UIs.

Personal expertise:

• Ducky has ten to fifteen years of industrial programming experience in C, Perl, Smalltalk, and (to a lesser extent), Python. While she doesn't have a lot of experience in Java, she recently took an OOP class in Java. Her class projects were GUI-intensive.
• Sebastian
• Sukesh

Milestones

• 6 Feb: hand in proposal
• 12 Feb: Source code repository set up. Detailed task assignments done.
• 26 Feb: Absolutely minimal GUI minimally functional canvas, containers, labels, and buttons can be placed and moved around, one property apiece can be
• 5 Mar: Simple controls fleshed out: all properties of containers, labels, and buttons can be set; canvas can be exported to AspectJ.
• 12 Mar: check boxes, radio buttons, combo boxes, text entry, list boxes fully working
• 19 Mar: trees fully functional, last minute disasters
• 26 Mar: last-minute disasters, project writeup
• 3-5 Apr: Project presentation