Java Swing GUI tool based on XML, XMLPanelEdit by OOP-Reserch

OOP-Reserch developed the Java Swing GUI tool, OOP XMLPanelEdit. By our easy-to-use Java Swing GUI tool, you can develop your Java client program easily. Because this Java Swing GUI builder represents the Java Swing GUI in XML, your Java client can be internationalization ready. With XMLPanelEdit, your Java Swing GUI can alter its representation on the fly. Java Swing GUI in multiple languages can be easily created. Just by editing XML, internationalization can easily be done.

OOP XMLPanelEdit Version 1.0 is no longer available. Please use OOP XMLPanelEdit Version 1.2

Swing, Swing, Swing!

Swing is the set of GUI related Classes supplied with JDK1.2. Especially, JTable,JTree,JList and the subclasses of JTextComponents are easy to update their contents due to the 'Model-View-Controller' architecture, which means the centralized data can be shared by client programs over the net.(Note: All other Swing GUI components are also based on the Model-View-Controller architecture.) And Swing GUI components are 'Event-driven', which enables us to define how each component respond to the actions from the users at our hand. With these characters, we can take the full advantage of OOP and build up the enterprise oriented GUI easily.

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Swing related link

And what do we need?

While the Swing provides us 'Freedom of programming' depending on its sophisticated concept, it is still somewhat tedious work to define how our GUIs can be represented on the screen, especially as for the position and the size of the each component. For example, even in case that we want to re-position a button on our GUI slightly more left, we have to modify our source code and recompile it again. And in case of somewhat complicated GUI Class, the most portion of our source code may be the GUI-related one, which leads to the difficulty for reading and manage it.
How happy we are if we can modify our GUI without touching any fragment of our source code! It is desirable to get rid of the portion of placing the GUI components from our source code. To archive this, we need the alternative way to represent the structure of our GUIs other than writing them in our source code directly.
The Swing based GUI has the nested structure, which means that some 'container' component holds other 'atomic' level components as its child components. Such a 'container' component knows how to place its child components in it. And each component has a set of the attributes which determines how it is represented, such as the size, the alignment, the font, the background color and so on. This means that we can represent the structure of our GUI in some abstract way. And as your know, XML is suitable solution for such a case.(XML is the way to represent the data along with its meaning.) The following is the quote from xml_panel_1_0.dtd, the DTD for representing Swing based GUI.

<!ENTITY % panel.mdl
"layout?,size?,border?,toolbar?,panel.child*">
<!ELEMENT panel (%panel.mdl;)>
<!ATTLIST panel
%opaque.att;
%panel.name.att;
%alignmentX.att;
%alignmentY.att;
%label.text.att;
%label.image.att;
%layout.border.constraint.att;
%access.name.att;
%access.descript.att;
%color.fg.att;
%color.bg.att;>

<panel opaque="false">
<layout>
<layout.border/>
</layout>
<size>
<preferred>
<dimension dimensionX="500" dimensionY="300"/>
</preferred>
<max>
<dimension dimensionX="500" dimensionY="300"/>
</max>
<min>
<dimension dimensionX="500" dimensionY="300"/>
</min>
</size>
<border border="RAISED">
<insets insets.bottom="10"
insets.left="10"
insets.right="10"
insets.top="10"/>
</border>
<toolbar opaque="false"
toolbar.direction="horizontal"
toolbar.float="false"
toolbar.layout.border.constraint="NORTH">
<insets insets.bottom="5"
insets.left="5"
insets.right="5"
insets.top="5"/>
<toolbar.child>
<component class.name="javax.swing.JLabel"
editable="false"
label.text="Select!"
opaque="false"
value.name="label"
wordwrap="false"/>
</toolbar.child>
.....