Generating package-private form fields

[cemerick]

We've used NetBeans' Matisse in the past to lay out forms, which we've then wired up and used from our fundamentally Clojure-based applications. To do this, it is far more convenient to simply generate component fields with package-private access (e.g. "Button text;" rather than "private Button text;").

This was possible in Matisse, but I don't see any field visibility preferences in WindowBuilder -- either globally, or on a per-field basis. We could simply change the fields' visibility as necessary in the code, but I presume that that would get wiped out on a future regeneration/update of the source by WindowBuilder.

Any thoughts? (Besides "use accessors"? )

- Chas

[Eric Clayberg]

This was possible in Matisse, but I don't see any field visibility preferences in WindowBuilder -- either globally, or on a per-field basis.

No one has ever asked for that. We will look into adding that for you.

We could simply change the fields' visibility as necessary in the code, but I presume that that would get wiped out on a future regeneration/update of the source by WindowBuilder.

Definitely don't assume that. SWT Designer is not like Matisse at all in that respect. You can generally make any source code changes that you want and the tool will preserve them as well as your formatting.

The only time it would change the field definition would be if you were to convert the field to a local variable and back to a field again.

[cemerick]

Great, thanks for your efforts. We'll go ahead with twiddling access keywords for now.

[Eric Clayberg]

The latest WindowBuilder build now includes preference settings to control the field visibility...

http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/tools ... -beta.html