🚀 go-pugleaf

Lori,

Thanks a lot for chiming in on this topic. It's always
a pleasure to read your posts.

First of all, I fully agree with you on the topic of
having solid requirements before one embarks on the
journey of UI building (or any software task for that
matter).

I cannot agree more with the fact that

> layout problems pre-date Java by quite a bit.

and

> Layout for applications that need to work on screens of varying 
> resolution, with user-customizable font sizes, is a *nightmare*.

However, what I am trying to suggest is that in my experience
designing a good number of _business_  (and I do want to stress the
word business) applications for many users for the last 10 years
this need for creating " ... screens that look good at various
resultions with user-customizable font sizes ..." is highly overhyped.

Basically, in my opinion this need is marginal at best. Now to solve
this imagined problem you do needs certain tools. I fully agree that
LayoutManagers are great tools with GridBag layout being the powertool.
I also know a couple of 3d party layout tools (e.g. jGoodies, etc ...)
that can help a lot with good form design.

With all these great tools at our disposal we tend to marginalize the
XY layout and delegate to it the tasks of "throwing something together
quickly that looks good". I disagree. I think all other Layout Managers
should be marginalized because they solve the problem of a 0.1% of
business users who want to use a different font size or a non-standard
resolution.

> I think it is worth the effort to learn the proper usages of all the 
> layout managers, and then to use them appropriately.  If you don't do that 
> learning, then using layout managers will always be a frustrating 
> experience.

This is exactly the issue worth discussing. I have supervised several
programmers who were re-training themselves from VB to Java and Layout
Managers have always been the hard part to grasp and apply. Now let us
stop for a minute and think why it is the case... not because these
people are not as bright as the Java codes ... certainly not because
Layout Managers are rocket science, -- in my opinion it is because the
benefit of usage is _not apparent_. Now once you put on the glasses
of "solving the problem of various resolutions and font sizes" Layout
Managers start to make sense. :-)

Would be happy to hear other opinions.

Tony.