[Glade-devel] Matisse-like construction

[jvital at gmail.com (Joao Victor)]

Hello folks,

The next release of the Java IDE Netbeans will feature a new GUI
Builder they made, called Matisse. I've been playing around with it,
and i'm quite impressed. Layouts in Java are often too complex, which
makes it hard to create a decent gui builder; but i think they've got
it right this time.

Now, Glade has nothing to do with Java, so let me get to my point. The
point is: the _way_ Matisse interacts with the user is really nice,
giving you 'hints' as to how to where you should put the component,
etc.

And another interesting thing is that Matisse doesn't use the usual
complex layout managers, it uses as layout manager called GroupLayout,
which may have a lot in common with the current way layout works in
Gtk (with boxes grouping the components vertically and horizontally).

So, maybe Glade could get some ideas from it. Here's a flash
presentation of Matisse:
http://www.netbeans.org/files/documents/4/475/matisse.html

Cheers,
J.V.