We need to implement a Java desktop application that allows us (initially) to create / edit / resize / polygons on (initially) images. Then these polygons would be mapped to objects in our domain model.
So we basically need a toolbar with the options describe above and the possibility for the example to create a polygon on the an image and then scale it, or resize it, just that.
Do you know some library that could facilitate our work?
We've analyzed GEF, Picollo, NetBeans Visual API, Plain Swing or SWT/JFace, but none of them seems to help us to achieve our goal, which is, implement a really basic image editing tool.
I would like to mention that I'm not saying that what I want to do is not possible with the analyzed libraries, of course it can be done, but I'd like to learn from your experiences which is the correct path to take for this problem.
Any suggestion will be welcomed.
You could try to use GEF and the eclipse plataform.
this article could help you.
saluti
You might look at GraphPanel, a simple object drawing program. The control components are arranged in a JPanel, but JToolBar is a more flexible alternative.
Have you looked at imagine.dev.java.net? It is a NetBeans Platform application, which, though unfinished, might provide you with an interesting starting point.
Related
I have a data flow diagram (a diagram that looks like a flow chart). It has a set of specific geometrical components like rectangles, circles, ellipses and arrows.
What I'm trying to achieve is to detect these shapes and be able to know which component is connected to which component (through the lines) and finally read the text inside each one to extract data from the diagram and do further processing. It is also notable to mention that the diagram will not be drawn by hand but computer generated so we don't have to worry about angles and ratios being inaccurate.
I'm currently working in Java and I was wondering if this is going to be possible since Java is not the best language when it comes to image processing (correct me if I'm wrong). And if it's possible I'd you guys to point out where I should start looking.
I think Java is fine, and it has many libraries to process images. ImageJ is just one example. Personally, I like to use Python, so I write scripts in this language using Java API of the DMelt platform. Look at the documentation of this projecst, wiki. Here is a link to a few examples.
Doing this in Java wasn't a great idea because mainly the lack of online resources. After a good amount of research, I found that the best and the easiest approach was the use of C# and Emgu CV which is a cross platform .Net wrapper to the OpenCV image processing library.
This example helped me to get started with detecting basic geometrical shapes like Lines, Rectangles and Triangles.
I'm linking a database to NetBeans now and I need to create a interface for this. But when I need to adjust the position of button, label is difficult. Is it possible that show a GUI design view that easy for me to adjust without use the JFrame component?
If I understood your question correctly, you're looking for a GUI builder for Swing.
Netbeans ships with the Matisse Swing GUI Builder which will help you build GUIs easily and quickly. Tutorials aren't uncommon (such as the official tutorial or some user created videos on YouTube).
Some folks are fine with this work flow (since it speeds up development quite a bit). Others want to use custom frameworks and have requirements to use specific layouts in which case I recommend reading about different layout managers.
Take your pick and happy development! :)
Instead of trying to design your entire application in the GUI editor, you may be able to adapt the approach shown here. This will let you focus on a single container at a time. Also, remember to backup your .form files; more here.
I am trying to create a screen like this one
Initially I was trying to port a console program to java. I have found things like jcurses and charva but there is almost no documentation on them and I really cant understand how to use them.
So I figured that I could create a console like screen that resembled the one above.
what library / framwork would I be best using. Should I use swing as it if fully portable?
what would be the best approach being that I need to be able to navigate and alter the 00 in the picture above?
Easily usable would be great but as long as it has good documentation that I can learn it from that would be fine.
(Answering as if you're looking for a hex editor.)
http://jhecomponent.sourceforge.net/
http://www.fifesoft.com/hexeditor/
http://hexedit-lib.sourceforge.net/
Played a bit with the fifesoft.com offering, kinda cool.
If you're not looking for a hex editor, can you be more specific? If you just want a cursor-addressable window you'll probably have to suck it up and figure out something like jcurses or libjcsi :)
If you prefer to create a full fledged GUI with Java you could certainly use Swing. I would prefer SWT as a matter of personal taste, the widget library of Eclipse. You will find a lot of snippets and tutorials (same for Swing). Here is the Widget Library.
Here is a discussion about SWT versus Swing.
You could use the table layout manager to create the layout shown in your screenshot. If you rewrite the application from scretch, you should be able to handle the GUI events and update the widgets according to your application needs. You will easily find articles when you search for swt and table. If you would like to keep the code base and just exchange the GUI, I 'm not sure about the best approach. Maybe, the libs jcurses and charva are the way to go.
Unless you are looking to run the app on a headless VM (where a console/tty is all you've got), I'd use Swing. Create a JTable with a custom TableModel (to provide the data) and custom renderers (to provide the hex formatting) and everything should just work. Consider deriving from the various DefaultXXX implementations to save a lot of work.
I am currently toying with the idea of converting a small/medium sized project from AWT to SWT, although Swing is not totally out of the picture yet.
I was thinking about converting the main window to an SWT_AWT bridge object, but I have no idea how the semantics for this work. After that, I plan to update dialog for dialog, but not necessarily within one release. Is this possible?
Has someone done a conversion like this and can give me some hints? Is there maybe even a tutorial somewhere out there? Is there maybe even a tool that can automate parts of this? I have tried googling, but to no avail.
Update: One additional thing is: Currently, this is a netbeans project. Might be of help or not, I don't know.
We have done this quite a few times. But only because we are going from a Swing application to an Eclipse RCP application not because we like messing with things. This project will really let you know whether you've separated your controller/model code from your view code.
One suggestion is to not try and convert everything all at once. You will end up with a bunch of mixed code that doesn't work at all. You can start at converting portals. I would consider a portal anything within a Tab, Dialog, or Window, essentially self contained unit. If you have a window that opens up, create the Window in SWT, but make it's contents the existing AWT/Swing. This should be fairly straight forward and allow you to get used to the (I really hope they weren't drunk and had a good reason for this) way of instantiating and associating parent/child controls.
One gotcha that can occur is with transparent components. Swing, with the exception of a "window" class is all rendered in Java. This makes it very easy to render things the way you want them. In SWT, there are some restrictions:
Borders. If you use SWT.BORDER you are stuck with whatever color the native component uses. Your best bet is to use a PaintListener and render your own borders if you want them in a different style or color.
Transparent labels, progress bars. I have not been able to get Labels or Progress Bars to have a transparent background. If you want them to take on the parent color, or drawing you will need to render the text and other controls yourself.
Controls. There are composites and controls in SWT. Think of Controls as the basic native controls that do all the native API calls. These cannot be subclassed, which makes things difficult.
Tables will give you the most trouble. Make sure everything is stable before you attempt to convert a JTable to a Table or TableViewer. You will spend some time on these, especially if you have custom editors and viewers.
I have not researched why SWT was designed the way it was. I am guessing there HAD to be a good reason. It would be great if someone had a blog or defense to it's design so I don't have to search for it. Once it's posted I'll remove these lines since they have no relevance to the question.
Addition
I want to add that since you have an existing product I assume works. The best piece of advice I can give you is to never let your code get into a state that it cannot compile and run. If you work on your conversion and whatever you check in always runs and executes (despite the visual differences between SWT/AWT/Swing) you will save yourself many headaches in the long run. The worst thing you can do is try to tackle this all at once and get your code in an unstable state for weeks at a time.
I would suggest importing it into a WindowBuilder project, as WindowBuilder gives you the ability to parse existing code and create a GUI mock-up, then morph components to either SWT or Swing.
If you're thinking of using a mix of SWT and Swing in the same application, this Eclipse Corner Article will be immensely useful.
We are preparing the same step: Swing to SWT/JFace. First we try to determine the bottlenecks: reimplement special components derived from JComponent with SWT/JFace, search for a replacement of JIDE docking (we want to use SWT/JFace, not RCP to avoid too much hassle). The worst thing we already imagine is, that in Swing you could create components and adding it later to the parent. With SWT this is not possible: the parent component must be passed as a reference to the child component's constructor. This will require major refactoring in the Swing application before using SWT.
Frankly, we rate the conversion a very heavy change, because we expect the time where nothing can be compiled as quite long. We try to decrease this time by preparing everything as good as possible, but we'll see how good it will work.
Update from April 6th 2011:
We now refactored our Swing application to always create components with their parent (as in SWT). Our subclasses of JFrame and JDialog got refactored to just have a JDialog instance to make it easier to switch to SWT's Shell. In parallel, we rewrite sophisticated components in SWT.
I can't seem to find anybody who has done or posted something like this; Essentially I want to design my own UI in photoshop and then slice down the images to use it in a Java application. Essentially coding in the PSD file as the GUI. Is this possible? If so, can anybody lead me in the right direction?
I'm not sure what editor to use for this sort of stuff. I am using the Eclipse IDE and I know there is a Visual Editor but, I already have the actual design for every component in a PSD file. All I want to do is to start incorporating this into the application. Thanks.
It depends on how far your design goes. If you simply want to have normal Swing components on top of your image this is easy. Convert your PSD into (for example) PNG, create a custom JPanel subclass that loads the image and overwrite the paintComponent() method to draw the image instead of the normal background. All child components can then be set to be transparent with setOpaque(false). This puts your image into the background and puts the components float on top of it.
If you want to change how individual components look, its a lot more work. You basically need to implement a new Look&Feel for Swing. I wouldn't recommend going that route, unless you really have to, we are talking about weeks of work here, and it requires a lot of testing to really make it work properly on all platforms.
Alternately, there are already tons of custom Look&Feels available, I suggest you take a look at some freely available ones (just google "java look and feel"). Many of them can be customized to some degree (how much depends on the actual implementation, so take a close look at the source/documentation for each of them).
You might want to take a look at NetBeans which has a Swing GUI Builder. You would have to redraw your components there, and then write all the code to process the events. It is sometimes good to start with that, though often times it is less frustrating to lay them out with code by hand as it can difficult to make changes in code and have the builder keep up. There is nothing I know that will let you start from a photoshop image and proceed to building a GUI. Sounds like a good project to make someone rich. :-)