How rich is rich?

[jfcloutier]

I am new to RC.

I am building an app with a rich UI. Can RC as it now stands help me or will it get in the way? Has anyone built an RC app with a complex UI (views within views within views, views with toolbars, InternalFrames etc.)? What was it like?

I have wandered through the source without finding much obvious support for rich UIs. Documentation is sparse, including the JavaDoc. The only sample application has a very simple UI. So it's hard to tell and make an informed decision.

Any advice will be much appreciated.

[jwray]

I'm currently working on a mutli-view rich client app and I've found the Spring RCP very useful.

The spring rcp has been designed with a multipage per application, and multiview per page design. However, there is no current implemenation for multple views per page.

Personally, I've been using the JIDE docking framework for multiview support and the code to integrate with spring rcp has been released. I've found this solution very powerful, but it's not free.

I believe there was some support/integration code floating about that used one of the open source docking frameworks for multi-view implemenation.

Jonny

I am new to RC.

I am building an app with a rich UI. Can RC as it now stands help me or will it get in the way? Has anyone built an RC app with a complex UI (views within views within views, views with toolbars, InternalFrames etc.)? What was it like?

I have wandered through the source without finding much obvious support for rich UIs. Documentation is sparse, including the JavaDoc. The only sample application has a very simple UI. So it's hard to tell and make an informed decision.

Any advice will be much appreciated.

[jfcloutier]

Thanks. I had checked out JIDE. It looks great but I am developing an open source application and I want all components to be also open source. That rules out JIDE, even though they generously offer a free license (closed source I assume) to OS projects.

I think that, for the time being, I will use straight SWING plus open source component libraries plus Spring. I'll check back with RC when it has better support for complex UIs. Hopefully by then documentation (JavaDoc and guide) will be on a par with the parent Spring project.

[oliverhutchison]

I have wandered through the source without finding much obvious support for rich UIs.

I totally understand your reticence to use the framework given the lack of documentation, but what specifically are you looking for? Spring Rich comes with a full binding stack, a window management system, a great command/action abstraction.

Ollie

[jfcloutier]

I do like what I see (validating forms, command abstraction, wizards etc.). But what I don't see, and this might just be a case of "male refrigerator blindness", is how to productively use RC (without JIDE) to write a rich client that has the complexity of, for example, an IDE.

My app will have a main window and a handful of seconday windows, so the WindowManager tree will be shallow. Some windows will be composed of multiple, complex views; there will be InternalFrames (with ToolBars) in DesktopPanes in TabPanes in SplitPanes etc.

With sparse documentation and one example with a simple UI, it is difficult to gauge the costs vs benefits.

Any guidance is much welcome.

[jwray]

Well, however you write the multiple view code you'll still need validating forms, commands etc. so the framework would prove useful there. In fact, when I first started the current project I'm working on I didn't know I'd need a multiview UI and I still found much I could use in spring rcp.

Also, do a search on the JIRA for multiview or some such. I'm pretty sure there's some multiview code around that uses an open source docking framework. It was posted quite a while back though, maybe end of last year/start of this?

I do like what I see (validating forms, command abstraction, wizards etc.). But what I don't see, and this might just be a case of "male refrigerator blindness", is how to productively use RC (without JIDE) to write a rich client that has the complexity of, for example, an IDE.

My app will have a main window and a handful of seconday windows, so the WindowManager tree will be shallow. Some windows will be composed of multiple, complex views; there will be InternalFrames (with ToolBars) in DesktopPanes in TabPanes in SplitPanes etc.

With sparse documentation and one example with a simple UI, it is difficult to gauge the costs vs benefits.

Any guidance is much welcome.

[snpe]

I integrate spring rcp with eclipse rcp and use all from eclipse rcp - views,perspective,jobs,action (and spring action in swing views) etc - all from eclipse rcp

it work fine and I will finish presentation for end Septembar (I hope)

I post one screeshot before and this is another (integrate with OpenOffice for report in xls, rtf etc format)

http://www.snpe.co.yu/images/ooinrcp.png

Account order view is swing view with spring rcp binding and validation

regards

[oliverhutchison]

The windowing system in Spring Rich is currently one of the weaker modules so if you want to create an applicaiton with the complexity of an IDE then I'd recomand you look to an alternative framework for that functionality. However the binding, validation, commands etc code does not mandate the use of the windowing system so there's no reason you can't integrate our binding system with an alternative windowing framework.

Spring Rich is not a standalone solution for rich client development - what we provide is a set of modules that help ease some of the more common "pain points".

Ollie

[jfcloutier]

Got it. Thanks!

[ThomasCorbin]

Thanks,
Tom