I learned about Eclipse as an open source, fairly platform and language
neutral
development IDE about 8 months ago and was very intrigued.

Now I'm in a new job and was trying to introduce Eclipse as a tool that
we can
use. Unfortunately it now seems that there are no good GUI (Swing or
SWT)
development tools (one of the main reasons to use an IDE in my
opinion). What
gives? Is this thing going anywhere or should I just go back to the
ever buggy
NetBeans??
I hope I'm just missing some major plugin that everyone's using.

James Kimble wrote:
> I learned about Eclipse as an open source, fairly platform and
language
> neutral
> development IDE about 8 months ago and was very intrigued.

me too!

>
> Now I'm in a new job and was trying to introduce Eclipse as a tool
that
> we can
> use. Unfortunately it now seems that there are no good GUI (Swing or
> SWT)
> development tools (one of the main reasons to use an IDE in my
> opinion).

Wrong, IDE should track tasks and code dependency, do version control
and refactoring, and give you an overview of project by drawing
diagrams (UML).

> What
> gives? Is this thing going anywhere or should I just go back to the
> ever buggy
> NetBeans??
> I hope I'm just missing some major plugin that everyone's using.
You mean GUI designer? Why do you need it?

>Wrong, IDE should track tasks and code dependency, do version control
>and refactoring, and give you an overview of project by drawing
>diagrams (UML).

No, it's very simple to use external tools to do all those things and
generally
in a more effective way than those that are tied to and IDE. An IDE
just gives
you a single interface to all of them (though often not as good an
interface as
they offer individually).


>You mean GUI designer? Why do you need it?

Drag and drop GUI generation that works well in a reasonably
generalized
way (XML description) to allow rapid development is a function that is
uniquely useful in an IDE. You need it to be as productive as possible
in creating a GUI. Yes, it can be done manually but it's not as fast as
doing it graphically. You're designing a graphical thing (a GUI) it's
best done graphically. Even very
experienced GUI creaters (and I am) prefer to work in a gaphical Vs
manual
environment.

James Kimble wrote:
> >Wrong, IDE should track tasks and code dependency, do version
control
> >and refactoring, and give you an overview of project by drawing
> >diagrams (UML).
>
> No, it's very simple to use external tools to do all those things and
> generally
> in a more effective way than those that are tied to and IDE. An IDE
> just gives
> you a single interface to all of them (though often not as good an
> interface as
> they offer individually).

I think external command-line tools are fine, but not those GUI ones.
Just look at those diff apps - they can't even highlighten keywords and
parens when you view code, that's really a pain in ass (especially when
you're reading lisp).

>
>
> >You mean GUI designer? Why do you need it?
>
> Drag and drop GUI generation that works well in a reasonably
> generalized
> way (XML description) to allow rapid development is a function that
is
> uniquely useful in an IDE. You need it to be as productive as
possible
> in creating a GUI. Yes, it can be done manually but it's not as fast
as
> doing it graphically. You're designing a graphical thing (a GUI) it's
> best done graphically. Even very
> experienced GUI creaters (and I am) prefer to work in a gaphical Vs
> manual
> environment.

Not if you use Tcl/Tk and Python's Tkinter :)

Even if GUI designers are useful, most of them (including vs.net's) are
too lame. None of those which I have seen can let you preview the
possible look after resizing or color changing (on windows), or help
you to design custom widgets.

"James Kimble" <jkimble@one.net> wrote in message
news:1106372885.753497.310980@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> >Wrong, IDE should track tasks and code dependency, do version control
> >and refactoring, and give you an overview of project by drawing
> >diagrams (UML).
>
> No, it's very simple to use external tools to do all those things and
> generally
> in a more effective way than those that are tied to and IDE. An IDE
> just gives
> you a single interface to all of them (though often not as good an
> interface as
> they offer individually).
>
>
> >You mean GUI designer? Why do you need it?
>
> Drag and drop GUI generation that works well in a reasonably
> generalized
> way (XML description) to allow rapid development is a function that is
> uniquely useful in an IDE. You need it to be as productive as possible
> in creating a GUI. Yes, it can be done manually but it's not as fast as
> doing it graphically.

I beg to differ.
I can create a GUI using a text editor, faster than, more robust than, more
maintainable than any "GUI builder" - even some of the best (i.e. not
Eclipse).  This is not a special talent or anything - I know of others who
feel the same way, but one is inclined to question the experience that you
boldly claim to have given such remarks.

> You're designing a graphical thing (a GUI) it's
> best done graphically. Even very
> experienced GUI creaters (and I am) prefer to work in a gaphical Vs
> manual
> environment.
>

-- 
Tony Morris
http://xdweb.net/~dibblego/

check out http://www.swt-designer.com/ possibly??

"James Kimble" <jkimble@one.net> wrote:

> 
> 
> I learned about Eclipse as an open source, fairly platform and language
> neutral
> development IDE about 8 months ago and was very intrigued.
> 
> Now I'm in a new job and was trying to introduce Eclipse as a tool that
> we can
> use. Unfortunately it now seems that there are no good GUI (Swing or
> SWT)
> development tools (one of the main reasons to use an IDE in my
> opinion).

Far from a reason for calling Eclipse a "sick, dying, dead" project :-)

Nevertheless, have a look at these:

http://eclipse.org/ve/

= the official Eclipse Visual Editor project, which is working on just 
what you describe. Try it out, AFAIK it is in a very usable state. 

http://www.swtguibuilder.com/index.htm

= a commercial plugin to build SwT GUI's. According to the comments, the 
freeware version is not all that good, but that says nothing about the 
full-fledged version of course.

Anyway, I'm not into the GUI builder stuff, so I can't tell you what is 
going to work for you and what not. Just try it out, and see :-)

Regards
Wald

PS. If you can't find certain functionality in Eclipse, check out the 
plugins archive at http://eclipse-plugins.info. You'll usually find 
something useful there.

I used jigloo for about a week but I didn;t like it. I had trouble getting consistent results. Now I've been using the IBM Visual Editor plugin for two weeks and so far it has been quite nice.

-- 
Message posted via http://www.javakb.com

>> Yes, it can be done manually but it's not as fast as
>> doing it graphically.
>
> I beg to differ.
> I can create a GUI using a text editor, faster than, more robust than,
> more
> maintainable than any "GUI builder"...
> but one is inclined to question the experience that you
> boldly claim to have given such remarks.

Tony, it's really a matter of preference. I don't think preferring to use a
GUI designer makes you any less of a coder. I think it's a left brain/right
brain thing. One of the best GUI designers I have ever seen can only use a
visual designer. He is better than me hands down; his GUI's are beautiful in
form and function. To compare extremes, I would rather have a glass enema
than create a GIF without a designer, but I prefer my HTML work with an HTML
aware text editor. Alternatively, I know way back when that VB 3.0's visual
designer came out, it was vast improvement in form, function and
productivity over creating ASCII "windows" under DOS.

Personally, I'd like to know what the upper echelon of GUI designers for
Eclipse are. I'm afraid I'm going to have to delve into AWT/Swing before too
long.

Tom Dyess
OraclePower.com

> Far from a reason for calling Eclipse a "sick, dying, dead" project
:-)

Well, I really wasn't calling it that, I was hoping that it wasn't. I
think the
philosophy of it (platform and language independant) is great! I've
always used a text editor to write code and never made the transition
to an IDE because I saw no advantage to having to learn an IDE
for every language I use (which are many) especially since each and
every one has quirks.
Thanks for your comments though. Gives me a place to start.

>I beg to differ.
>I can create a GUI using a text editor, faster than, more robust than,
more
>maintainable than any "GUI builder" - even some of the best (i.e. not
>Eclipse). This is not a special talent or anything - I know of others
who
>feel the same way, but one is inclined to question the experience that
you
>boldly claim to have given such remarks.

It really comes back to what you get comfortable with. I've seen guys
do an
incredible job with a text editor but I've seen it go the other way
too. I've
always used a text editor for GUI work but I simply do better when I
can
see where I'm going rather than having to carry it in my head as I
code. Maybe
it's a sign of age ;<).  On the other hand you can take my vi away when
you
can pry it from my cold dead hands. It's really what you get used to.

I think my biggest point is that GUI design can be done by neophyte
programmers (or non-programmers) if a good tool exists. Otherwise it
must be
done by someone with a fair amount of coding expertise. Why waste the
talent of a programmer doing graphical design, human interaction stuff.
It's
really a different area of interest.

My primary reason for this post, however, was to test the waters of
those that
are using an IDE for Java development and see where they stand on
Eclipse.
I like the idea but it doesn't seem ready for prime time. I could be
convinced
I'm wrong though. I just haven't used it enough to know.

Thanks, I'll give it a try!

James Kimble <jkimble@one.net> wrote:
> My primary reason for this post, however, was to test the waters of
> those that are using an IDE for Java development and see where they
> stand on Eclipse.

> I like the idea but it doesn't seem ready for prime time. I could be
> convinced I'm wrong though. I just haven't used it enough to know.

You may or may not be, but I'm certainly convinced that you're wrong.  
Eclipse is, from my experience at least, the most single widely used IDE 
for Java development (that's even more certainly true if you include 
WSAD, which is Eclipse + more plugins).  To call Eclipse not ready for 
prime time is basically a matter of sticking your head in the sand and 
ignoring reality.

If you are part of the minority of Java software developers who care 
about a visual GUI designer, then certainly check out the options as 
others have suggested.  However, you should realize you're in a 
minority.  At least 80% of Java is run on systems that don't have a 
monitor attached.  Of the remaining 20%, I'd guess more than half is 
written by people who don't care for GUI designers anyway -- a 
phenomenon that's very common in Java because the high-level layout 
mechanisms free you from having to line up pixels by hand.

You probably created a lot of these incredulous reactions by implying 
that the lack of a good visual GUI designer suggests that Eclipse is 
sick or dying.  That is so far removed from reality, frankly, that I am 
guessing a lot of people assume you are merely trolling.

-- 
www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way To Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

Chris Smith wrote:

> You may or may not be, but I'm certainly convinced that you're wrong.  
> Eclipse is, from my experience at least, the most single widely used IDE 
> for Java development (that's even more certainly true if you include 
> WSAD, which is Eclipse + more plugins).  To call Eclipse not ready for 
> prime time is basically a matter of sticking your head in the sand and 
> ignoring reality.
> 
> If you are part of the minority of Java software developers who care 
> about a visual GUI designer, then certainly check out the options as 
> others have suggested.  However, you should realize you're in a 
> minority.  At least 80% of Java is run on systems that don't have a 
> monitor attached.  Of the remaining 20%, I'd guess more than half is 
> written by people who don't care for GUI designers anyway -- a 
> phenomenon that's very common in Java because the high-level layout 
> mechanisms free you from having to line up pixels by hand.

NetBeans and SunONE Studio (that's the commercial version of NetBeans, right? I 
forget what the name is) do exceedingly good jobs of handling GUI-related 
stuff. They're also bloated, resource-hogging applications, in my opinion. (Not 
to mention that the last NetBeans version I tried crashed often.)

Eclipse does much better. I like Eclipse as an IDE for much the same reason 
that I like IBM's SWT as a widget toolbox over Sun's Swing. I respect and 
appreciate - and admire! - Sun's desire to maintain total platform 
independence. On the other hand, real-world application performance is 
extremely important to me, and some people don't run their apps on a PC with a 
half-gigabyte of RAM. Hell, even the laptop that serves as my development 
machine only has 256MB! :)

> You probably created a lot of these incredulous reactions by implying 
> that the lack of a good visual GUI designer suggests that Eclipse is 
> sick or dying.  That is so far removed from reality, frankly, that I am 
> guessing a lot of people assume you are merely trolling.

There IS a good visual GUI designer available for Eclipse. It may not be free, 
but it's under $100, and it works well. I don't know how well the built-in GUI 
designer works in the newer versions of Eclipse, but Jigloo rocks. Especially 
3.0, which has removed the few objections I had to using earlier versions of 
Jigloo. http://www.cloudgarden.com/

And I am not employed by them, just a satisfied user.

-- 
JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638)
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED

"In case anyone was wondering, that big glowing globe above the Victor
Valley is the sun." -Victorville _Daily Press_ on the unusually large
amount of rain the Southland has gotten this winter (January 12th, 2005)

Steve Sobol <sjsobol@JustThe.net> wrote:
> > You probably created a lot of these incredulous reactions by implying 
> > that the lack of a good visual GUI designer suggests that Eclipse is 
> > sick or dying.  That is so far removed from reality, frankly, that I am 
> > guessing a lot of people assume you are merely trolling.
> 
> There IS a good visual GUI designer available for Eclipse.

I didn't mean to suggest that there is not such a thing.  I really 
wouldn't know.  I only said that the lack of such a thing would be no 
indication at all of Eclipse being sick, dying, or dead -- for the 
simple reason that 90% of Java developers probably don't care.

-- 
www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way To Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

> You probably created a lot of these incredulous reactions

I'm used to getting an incredulous reaction on usenet no matter what I
post.
There's enough people reading these groups that SOMEONE is bound to
take SOMETHING the wrong way and get offended. Oh well....

I am glad to here that Eclipse seems to be going strong and that there
is
a good GUI development tool that can be used with it (even if it must
be
a commercial one). I am working on an application that uses JNI to
pass communications from a driver (LINUX) written in C to a JAVA GUI.
We're also using lots of PERL too (gotta use PERL ya know!!). So an IDE
that will allow us to work with all of these languages while only
having to
get to know the kinks of one IDE would be great.
Thanks to everyone for the information passed on here.

I do not like Eclipse, except the very basic truth that it is free.

For java, it is OK but far behind JBuilder. I use it at home now.

For c++, it is a mess. For me, anything beyond a "Hello World" program
will be a pain to develop on Eclipse. Actually, "Hello World" is the
only program I have completed with Eclipse. Now I use it as a c++
source code viewer.  For that, Eclipse does have good features.

The concept of Eclipse is very strange. For example, for java, (may be
I am wrong), there is not a build function. If you want to test your
code compiles or not, the only way is to run it. For C++, it took me
days to figure out how to build and run my project. After I did figure
it out, I found the same routine did not work for another project since
some buttons were grayed out for reasons I never known. The second day,
however, buttons were grayed out even for my first project.

I do not think Eclipse deserves the reputation it has now. I am a lazy
guy and do not want to ready documentation. Maybe that is the problem
why I am not good at Eclipse. But I have used Visual Studio and
JBuilder for many years. I learned very quickly without reading
documentation. Good IDE follows "human logic", not "technology logic".
Good IDE works the "normal" way, not the "expert" way.

James Kimble <jkimble@one.net> wrote:
> a commercial one). I am working on an application that uses JNI to
> pass communications from a driver (LINUX) written in C to a JAVA GUI.
> We're also using lots of PERL too (gotta use PERL ya know!!). So an IDE
> that will allow us to work with all of these languages while only
> having to get to know the kinks of one IDE would be great.

I'm not aware of a very stable Perl development environment for Eclipse.  
Of course, there are the CDT and JDT for the other two languages, which 
are both part of the Eclipse project itself and are quite stable.

EPIC appears to be the universal choice for Perl, but it currently 
advertises version 0.3.0.  Because of the wide variation in versioning 
standards among open-source projects, that could mean anything from only 
20% done, to practically stable.  I don't know which it is.

-- 
www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way To Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

 <quickcur@yahoo.com> wrote:
> For c++, it is a mess. For me, anything beyond a "Hello World" program
> will be a pain to develop on Eclipse. Actually, "Hello World" is the
> only program I have completed with Eclipse.

I don't know what to say about your C++ code problems with Eclipse.  I 
have not had similar problems with modern versions.  I did run into 
issues a long time ago when I tried to set up a first build of Eclipse 
with CDT.  These days, I don't consider it an issue at all.

> The concept of Eclipse is very strange. For example, for java, (may be
> I am wrong), there is not a build function. If you want to test your
> code compiles or not, the only way is to run it.

You've got that backwards.  There is not a build function by default 
because the incremental builder runs as you make changes.  To see 
errors, just open the "Problems" view, which appears by default as a tab 
at the bottom of the Java perspective.

If you don't like the automatic incremental build, you can turn it off.  
Then you can build the code with a button, just like in any other IDE.

> I do not think Eclipse deserves the reputation it has now. I am a lazy
> guy and do not want to ready documentation. Maybe that is the problem
> why I am not good at Eclipse.

Eclipse has the reputation that it has because it makes so many things 
so much easier.  It frequently allows you to think and work at a higher 
level than other tools.  All the little things -- like being able to 
highlight an expression and hit Alt-Shift-L -- mean that programming is 
less about typing than about working with the concepts of code.  There 
are definitely IDEs that are easier to set up and get accustomed to 
using, but there are very few tools that do a better job at being a 
development environment.

IMHO, of course.

-- 
www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way To Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

Chris Smith wrote:
> Steve Sobol <sjsobol@JustThe.net> wrote:
> 
>>>You probably created a lot of these incredulous reactions by implying 
>>>that the lack of a good visual GUI designer suggests that Eclipse is 
>>>sick or dying.  That is so far removed from reality, frankly, that I am 
>>>guessing a lot of people assume you are merely trolling.
>>
>>There IS a good visual GUI designer available for Eclipse.
> 
> 
> I didn't mean to suggest that there is not such a thing.  

I didn't mean to suggest that you were suggesting there wasn't. :)

> I really 
> wouldn't know.  I only said that the lack of such a thing would be no 
> indication at all of Eclipse being sick, dying, or dead -- for the 
> simple reason that 90% of Java developers probably don't care.

I find the "I'll code the GUI by hand" concept somewhat amusing. Dragging and 
dropping DOES seem (to me) to be a quicker way to design a GUI. As always, YMMV.

-- 
JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638)
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED

"In case anyone was wondering, that big glowing globe above the Victor
Valley is the sun." -Victorville _Daily Press_ on the unusually large
amount of rain the Southland has gotten this winter (January 12th, 2005)

quickcur@yahoo.com wrote:
> I do not like Eclipse, except the very basic truth that it is free.
> 
> For java, it is OK but far behind JBuilder. I use it at home now.

I've never used JBuilder. What do you like the most about it?

> I do not think Eclipse deserves the reputation it has now. I am a lazy
> guy and do not want to ready documentation. Maybe that is the problem
> why I am not good at Eclipse. But I have used Visual Studio and
> JBuilder for many years. I learned very quickly without reading
> documentation. Good IDE follows "human logic", not "technology logic".
> Good IDE works the "normal" way, not the "expert" way.

Good programmers read the directions for their programming tools. :P

-- 
JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638)
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED

"In case anyone was wondering, that big glowing globe above the Victor
Valley is the sun." -Victorville _Daily Press_ on the unusually large
amount of rain the Southland has gotten this winter (January 12th, 2005)

Steve Sobol <sjsobol@JustThe.net> wrote:
> I find the "I'll code the GUI by hand" concept somewhat amusing. Dragging and 
> dropping DOES seem (to me) to be a quicker way to design a GUI. As always, YMMV.

I'll certainly not argue that it can be quicker and easier.  My primary 
concern would be finding a way to eliminate the human psychological 
tendency to perfect what actually appears on the screen in the GUI 
designer, at the expense of the actual application, which will appear on 
several screens, potentially with different operating systems and/or 
different languages, and almost certainly with different window sizes.  
I've just seen too many applications where things coincidentally lined 
up in the GUI designer, but stuff is screwed up if you resize the window 
and the application is borderline unusable.

It would take a certain discipline to ensure that you've actually 
specified everything that's important, rather than things appearing a 
certian way by chance.  I don't know that this attention to detail is 
necessarily lost in a GUI designer, but there are a lot more 
opportunities to forget about something because it looks fine for you.

-- 
www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way To Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

Hands down EDITPLUS 2.

Try JBuilder for Java gui building.  It is the best java gui builder
I've played with.

I personally use vi and unix as my preferred dev environment.

I have downloaded Eclipse and I have downloaded Netbeans multiple
times, (I try every few months), but I always get them to crash within
about 15 minutes and then it is back to vi and unix.

Back to point, JBuilder has a gui gui builder.  Also javasoft.com has
lots of code for gui pieces and putting those together in a text editor
is not that much of a disease:
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/components.html
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/

Steve Sobol wrote:
> quickcur@yahoo.com wrote:
> > Good IDE works the "normal" way, not the "expert" way.
> 
> Good programmers read the directions for their programming tools. :P

Good, intuitive UIs (IDEs included) shouldn't need a user to read 
documentation to use in most cases, especially if you're familiar with 
the task domain.  Shortcuts should be provided for experts, but that 
shouldn't be the only obvious way to do things.

That said, I've used various IDEs over the years, Visual Studio 
included, and I haven't found Eclipse to be any harder to learn to use 
effecively than any other IDE.  YMMV, of course.

I've been trying some of the tools people are suggesting here and
I do like jigloo but I'd like to try the IBM VE. Does it work with
Eclipse
3.0? It appears to want you to download the GEF and EMF plugins
(that don't appear to be valid links from the IBM VE page) in addition
to the VE itself. The page itself looks to be over a year old which
makes me a little leary of trying it with the latest Eclipse.
Any suggestions, pointers or links much appreciated.

<quickcur@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:1106451876.123301.64120@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
>I do not like Eclipse, except the very basic truth that it is free.
>
> For java, it is OK but far behind JBuilder. I use it at home now.
>
> For c++, it is a mess. For me, anything beyond a "Hello World" program
> will be a pain to develop on Eclipse. Actually, "Hello World" is the
> only program I have completed with Eclipse. Now I use it as a c++
> source code viewer.  For that, Eclipse does have good features.
>
> The concept of Eclipse is very strange. For example, for java, (may be
> I am wrong), there is not a build function. If you want to test your
> code compiles or not, the only way is to run it. For C++, it took me
> days to figure out how to build and run my project. After I did figure
> it out, I found the same routine did not work for another project since
> some buttons were grayed out for reasons I never known. The second day,
> however, buttons were grayed out even for my first project.
>
> I do not think Eclipse deserves the reputation it has now. I am a lazy
> guy and do not want to ready documentation. Maybe that is the problem
> why I am not good at Eclipse. But I have used Visual Studio and
> JBuilder for many years. I learned very quickly without reading
> documentation. Good IDE follows "human logic", not "technology logic".
> Good IDE works the "normal" way, not the "expert" way.
>

I actually prefer Eclipse to JBuilder, but I am not currently doing any GUI 
work. I've used JBuilderX and JBuilder 2005 for a few months. I was pretty 
happy with X, but 2005 seemed buggy, so I dropped it for Eclipse and I like 
it better. I just wish there was a way to use bookmarks with keyboard 
shortcuts, other than that, it's peachy.. Currently I'm strictly doing 
Servlets though.

-- 
Tom Dyess
OraclePower.com 

Chris Smith wrote:

>>I find the "I'll code the GUI by hand" concept somewhat amusing. Dragging and 
>>dropping DOES seem (to me) to be a quicker way to design a GUI. As always, YMMV.
> 
> I'll certainly not argue that it can be quicker and easier.  My primary 
> concern would be finding a way to eliminate the human psychological 
> tendency to perfect what actually appears on the screen in the GUI 
> designer, at the expense of the actual application, which will appear on 
> several screens, potentially with different operating systems and/or 
> different languages, and almost certainly with different window sizes.  

Well, isn't that why Java uses layout managers? Coming from a GUI environment 
that doesn't have them (Visual Studio), I used to cheat by using 
AbsoluteLayout, but I've finally weaned myself off of it.

-- 
JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638)
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED

"In case anyone was wondering, that big glowing globe above the Victor
Valley is the sun." -Victorville _Daily Press_ on the unusually large
amount of rain the Southland has gotten this winter (January 12th, 2005)

Note: I've crashed JBuilder and once in a way that it needed a
reinstall.

Note 2: If you download a JBuilder release choose the download that
describes the task you are interested in sampling because the various
trial versions delineate functionality.

Steve Sobol <sjsobol@JustThe.net> wrote:
> Well, isn't that why Java uses layout managers? Coming from a GUI environment 
> that doesn't have them (Visual Studio), I used to cheat by using 
> AbsoluteLayout, but I've finally weaned myself off of it.

Yes, that is exactly why Java uses layout managers.  However, if your 
approach to using layout managers is to tweak them until things look 
right on *your* screen, then you've only come halfway toward 
understanding the problem.

-- 
www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way To Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

Good programmers write program, not read docs.

"Ge Cong" <gecong@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1106540025.279928.151740@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> Good programmers write program, not read docs.

Reading docs, tutorials and studying other programmers' code is what makes
good programmers. Writing programs by trial and error is what differentiates
hackers from programmers.

AM

Brill2 wrote:
> Hands down EDITPLUS 2.

And vim!

So can anyone comment on the advantages and disadvantages of Jigloo
Vs the IBM Visual Editor? I'd prefer to use the IBM VE but I'm not
sure it will work with Eclipse 3.0. Jigloo looks professional and I
like the way it works. Seems pretty intuitive and it's inexpensive.
I prefer to stay open-source with I can though so the IBM VE would
be better if it will work.

Any comments......??

On Sun, 23 Jan 2005 12:06:24 -0500, "Tom Dyess" <tdyess@dysr.com>
wrote:

><quickcur@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
>news:1106451876.123301.64120@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
>>
>> The concept of Eclipse is very strange. For example, for java, (may be
>> I am wrong), there is not a build function. If you want to test your
>> code compiles or not, the only way is to run it. For C++, it took me
>> days to figure out how to build and run my project. After I did figure
>> it out, I found the same routine did not work for another project since
>> some buttons were grayed out for reasons I never known. The second day,
>> however, buttons were grayed out even for my first project.
>>

I have not seen anyone else comment on this so:

- For Java it's very simple (C++ I don�t know at all). You just save
the code and it compiles automatically. You'll see any compilation
errors in your workspace immediately when you save (depending a bit on
the options you've set for the 'Problems' tab of course). Also you'll
get compilation errors in the class you're editing marked with red as
soon as you make them. I just can�t see where your problem is.

Erik D

James Kimble wrote:
> So can anyone comment on the advantages and disadvantages of Jigloo
> Vs the IBM Visual Editor? I'd prefer to use the IBM VE but I'm not
> sure it will work with Eclipse 3.0. Jigloo looks professional and I
> like the way it works. Seems pretty intuitive and it's inexpensive.
> I prefer to stay open-source with I can though so the IBM VE would
> be better if it will work.
> 
> Any comments......??

No :)

I've used Eclipse 3.1(M4) SDK with many plugins added (free from the
mirrors). I've used the VE and it seems to work quite well. It allows
you to drag and drop the widgets and edit many of their properties. I
didn't use it too much because I needed a simpler interface and didn't
want to spend too much time learning how to use VE.

I've also used the UML plugin. In my opinion, it's very hard to use (I
don't think it's at the release/production stage yet).
Try Eclipse's new download page, it's better (although in beta).