Spring RCP 1.1.0 released

[LievenDoclo]

Finally, after months of delays, it has finally arrived: the 1.1.0 Spring RCP release, featuring:

• The new Widget concept
• Rearrangement of the modules to ease development
• A lot of new Binders
• The data editor widget
• Bug fixes
• and many more improvements

Due to some problems with Sourceforge we haven't been able to deploy the release yet to the repository, but you can always check out the 1.1.0 tag and build it yourself, or get the release in a tar.gz format from the sourceforge project site.
Documentation is under way and will also include the new features.

The release notes:

Sub-task

* [RCP-577] - upgrade Spring to 2.5.5
* [RCP-578] - upgrade Spring binding to 1.0.5

Bug

* [RCP-376] - null application window
* [RCP-568] - ShowFrameCommand does not restore the MDI frame if minimized.
* [RCP-572] - Validation icons are not displayed for JTextArea inside JScrollPane
* [RCP-573] - DirtyIndicatorInterceptor must not show icons on read-only fields
* [RCP-582] - IAE in OverlayHelper: Don't know how to handle parent of type [javax.swing.JPanel].
* [RCP-583] - spring-richclient-samples-simple doesn't compile
* [RCP-587] - EnumRadioButtonBinding and -Binder should be moved to JDK6
* [RCP-590] - xswingx not in repository
* [RCP-591] - MessagesDialogExceptionHandler (and any AbstractDialogExceptionHandler) doesn't show the exception if the application hasn't been initialized enough yet and system.exits the JVM
* [RCP-595] - Jide-Integration: Deps/Versions
* [RCP-597] - wrong parent version in projects 'spring-richclient-full' en 'spring-richclient-release'

Improvement

* [RCP-129] - Modifier util methods in ActionCommand
* [RCP-210] - Abstract out Swing dependancy from binding system
* [RCP-299] - and access to the control on a CommandGroup
* [RCP-348] - Support setter injection and wait with initialize in afterPropertiesSet
* [RCP-372] - Focus for form used in Wizards and Dialogs
* [RCP-439] - make AbstractCommand.getFaceDescriptor() public
* [RCP-481] - Exceptions disappear in ApplicationLauncher
* [RCP-529] - Table-Builder - convinience method
* [RCP-531] - Obsolete interface FormBuilder?
* [RCP-534] - Make Exception handling aware of "ErrorCoded" exceptions
* [RCP-550] - Quick Patch for extensibility of MDI frames
* [RCP-553] - Adding shortcuts to BigDecimalTextField
* [RCP-557] - Enhancement for NachoCalendarDateFieldBinder
* [RCP-559] - Clean Shutdown due to exception...
* [RCP-567] - New form builder for creating complex forms.
* [RCP-585] - AbstractObjectTable#getSelectionModel should return EventSelectionModel

Refactoring

* [RCP-586] - Docking module split up into different integration projects

Task

* [RCP-533] - Remove Tiger naming from TigerEnumComboBoxBinder and TigerEnumTableCellRenderer
* [RCP-574] - Upgrade core to Java 1.5 source level
* [RCP-575] - Merge modules core, binding, forms, support and jdk5 into core
* [RCP-576] - upgrade Spring dependencies and other to latest version

[rdawes]

Congratulations!

Is there any documentation explaining the new Widget concept? I didn't see it discussed anywhere so far . . .

[cmadsen_dk]

Great.

Thank you for the effort.

[LievenDoclo]

Congratulations!

Is there any documentation explaining the new Widget concept? I didn't see it discussed anywhere so far . . .

Totally correct you are. The widget concept section is something I'm still writing documentation on. One of the widgets, DefaultDataEditorWidget is used in one of the new samples.
Essentially, a widget is some sort of combined collection of components, joined together to serve a single purpose. Implementing a Widget is just extending AbstractWidget, showing it is easy through the provided view or dialog helper classes. There is even a form class that is also a widget, so you can bridge that gap as well.

You should see a widget as a single component when looking at it from the outside, internally it combines the different components to get the behavior you want.

The ultimate goal is to create easy to use aggregate components, like an imaging component that also allows zooming, rotation, ... This can all be done with the widget concept.

Take a look at GlazedListsTableWidget (a JTable with Glazedlists behind it, just needs a table description describing the columns and a list providing the data), DefaultDataEditorWidget (complete CRUD widget with filtering possibilities, look at the sample to see how it's used) and HTMLViewWidget (shows an HTML page).

[rdawes]

Take a look at GlazedListsTableWidget (a JTable with Glazedlists behind it, just needs a table description describing the columns and a list providing the data), DefaultDataEditorWidget (complete CRUD widget with filtering possibilities, look at the sample to see how it's used) and HTMLViewWidget (shows an HTML page).

Ok, it sounds good. I'll have to take a closer look at how they are expected to be used.

One comment about the HTMLViewWidget: Swing's HTML support is very poor, limited to HTML 3.2 or something like that. There is also no way to stop it from repeatedly fetching resources from the network.

An alternative is to make use of Flying Saucer (xhtmlrender), which provides a robust performant XHTML renderer, which can be coerced into loading regular HTML via ibraries such as TagSoup or JTidy.

[jwray]

Hi,

not been doing any swing work of late so haven't been here much but just saw the release notice elsewhere. Congratulations, lot of work gone in there and I look forward to checking the widget concept out.

Jonny

[esschul]

Bugfix list looks good so I've just tried to upgrade. Says there's missing everything from abstractobjecttable to I don't know what. Probably just me doing something horribly wrong

Good start on the doc, btw. You should be able to reuse alot from your pdf? Oh well.

Cheers!

[virajith]

Great! Thank you very much for your unconditional effort on bringing the newest version...

And I'm really waiting for the documentation as I'm new to Spring RCP...

[lichenq]

where can i find the document or pdf?

[LievenDoclo]

Documentation is under construction, I'll be finishing it soon.