SWT Designer Free Edition vs. Eclipse Visual Editor?

[mtraum]

I've seen several posts elsewhere asking this, but have not seen an answer.

What are the advantages of using the SWT Designer Free Edition over the current drop of Visual Editor?

The disadvantages I can see (simply by looking at your feature list - I haven't yet tested SWT Designer) are:

- SWT Designer Free doesn't support the CoolBar Composite (which the current VE drop does)
- SWT Designer Free doesn't support the following controls (which the current VE drop does):

- Browser
- TableColumn
- Spinner
- ProgressBar
- Scale
- Slider

thanks,
mike

[mtraum]

It's been a while, so I'm replying to my own question in hopes of getting an answer.

Thanks,
Mike

[Eric Clayberg]

What are the advantages of using the SWT Designer Free Edition over the current drop of Visual Editor?

The Free Edition has only a fraction of the capabilities of the Pro version, but even so, it has a great deal to offer over the VE. Designer is faster and it can understand code created by almost any other GUI builder. The Pro version offer dozens of major features not available in the VE such as support for Eclipse Forms, PreferencePage Field Editors, DragSource/DropTarget, SWT_AWT, graphical menu editing, all swt.custom widgets, all JFace viewers, all RCP component types, sophisticaled NLS/I18N tools, multiple code generation modes, all SWT layout managers (including FormLayout), support for all Eclipse versions (including the latest 3.1 milestone builds), etc. A similar list of advantages is available for Swing Designer as well. As the old saying goes...you get what you pay for.

The disadvantages I can see (simply by looking at your feature list - I haven't yet tested SWT Designer) are:

- SWT Designer Free doesn't support the CoolBar Composite (which the current VE drop does)
- SWT Designer Free doesn't support the following controls (which the current VE drop does):

- Browser
- TableColumn
- Spinner
- ProgressBar
- Scale
- Slider

All of those are included in v4.0.1 version of SWT Designer. Also keep in mind that an NC version of SWT Designer is available for $99.

[mtraum]

I do understand that you have a NC version, which is a good thing. But, have you considered offering a full version for free for open source development?

It'd be really hard for a lead developer of an open source project to convince a group of open source developers that they need to buy a product in order to develop software that their offering for free.

As a by product, it would likely lead to those open source developers becoming experienced in your product and recommending it in their commercial projects.

Thanks,
Mike

[Paul.Helster]

It'd be really hard for a lead developer of an open source project to convince a group of open source developers that they need to buy a product in order to develop software that their offering for free.

This is not a strong argument. Open source, in my mind, does not mean I should spend more time coding. If a commercial tool will help me produce twice more code, wether I am developing open source or not, I will buy the tool. The remaining half of this time, I will spend it with my daughter.

[mtraum]

Paul,
You make a good point. But, if it weren't for the open source project Eclipse, this product would not exist. While it it my understanding that this company is making contributions to VE, I think it would be a greater gesture of appreciation to make it availble for free for open source development.

Mike

[Eric Clayberg]

You make a good point. But, if it weren't for the open source project Eclipse, this product would not exist.

Why do you think that? We have been in the GUI building business for more than a dozen years (first in the Smalltalk world). Eclipse is an excellent platform, but not the only possible choice.

I should also point out that we have been involved with Eclipse now for more than five years (since long before it was announced by IBM or even named for that matter). Some of the very first demo apps that IBM had to show people back in 2001 were created by us. If it weren't for the very early adoption of Eclipse by vendors like us, Eclipse itself might not have ever existed.

We have also contributed an extraordinary amount of resources (relative to the size of our company) to the Eclipse community. We were early members of the Eclipse board and currently chair the Eclipse Marketing and PR committees. We also run two Eclipse projects: KOI and Pollinate.

We have also given away tens of thousands of copies of free product to the Java community - first with our VA Assist product for VA Java and now with free versions of our Designer products.

While it it my understanding that this company is making contributions to VE, I think it would be a greater gesture of appreciation to make it availble for free for open source development.

We do make the full product available for free on a case by case basis and have given away many copies to support various open source projects (primarily Eclipse.org projects). We have also given the product away to any Eclipse committer that has asked us for it.

We don't plan to make the full pro version freely available (except on a case by case basis) as that would be far too easy to abuse (we see far too much license abuse as it is).

[mtraum]

Eric,
I wasn't saying that there weren't other alternatives, I was just saying that this product, in it's current form, could not exist without Eclipse.

Anyway, I'm glad to see that you have supported Eclipse and other developers in the open source community. I fully understand your misgivings about offering a free version because of license abuse issues. It looks like you have a very nice product and I wish you continued success.

Regards,
Mike

[Eric Clayberg]

I was just saying that this product, in it's current form, could not exist without Eclipse.

This product, in its current form, could also not exist without Java, without MS Windows (the primary market), without an incredibly talented development team lead by Konstantin, etc.

There is nothing intrinsic about Eclipse that made this product possible. It could have easily been created as a plugin to NetBeans, JBuilder or even as a standalone tool.

I don't think the fact that we took a gamble on Eclipse early on (which fortunately for us paid off), means that we owe any more to the Eclipse community than we are already doing (which is a lot).