🚀 go-pugleaf

Ultimately, I'd envision a UI designer for SpringLayout that offered some Together-like functionality where "springs" were used as a type of link b/t components.  Add a "Spring Tool" to the UI pallette, where the link would be drawn as a "squiggly line" with hook points on the end.

The steps would go something like...

(1) Place the components on the UI almost as in flow-layout.

(2) Then, taking the Spring tool, establish links, hooking one end of the "spring" graphical icon to each of the two components to be addressed (two buttons, a label and a border of the enclosing container, etc.).  

(3) Once the spring-link was established, you could simply set the appropriate spacing b/t the hooked components.  The EAST, WEST, NORTH, SOUTH settings would be determined (by default at least) by the edge of each component the spring was "hooked to."

***

In the meanwhile, I'll have to try your workaround and see what happens to the UI designer.  Thanks!



"Gillmer J. Derge [TeamB]" <spam@gillmerderge.com> wrote:
>Patrick W. McMichael wrote:
>> Does Borland have any intention of supporting the SpringLayout in 
> > JBuilder's UI designer?  This is a valuable layout, especially in
> > terms of dealing with resizing issues.
>
>For several versions jbuilder.jar has contained several 
>SwingLayout-related classes that are not enabled.  My guess is that they 
>intend to support it eventually but haven't yet figured out the right 
>UI.  Having tried it myself once, I can say it's not an easy thing to 
>create a usable interface for editing SpringLayout constraints.  There 
>are almost more options than for GridBagLayout.
>
>If you want to experiment (I make no assurances about what this may or 
>may not break) you could try enabling it yourself.  Make a file whose 
>contents are as shown below (two lines, 2nd line starts w/ a space). 
>Create a JAR with this file as the manifest (jar cmf foo.txt foo.jar). 
>Then put the JAR file in JBuilder's lib/ext directory and restart 
>JBuilder.  You *might* have some kind of SpringLayout support after that.
>
>OpenTools-Designer:
>  com.borland.jbuilder.cmt2.designer.ui.SpringLayoutAssistant
>
>-- 
>Gillmer J. Derge [TeamB]