Visual Inheritance & SpringLayout

[ncister]

Hi all,
I'm using WBP v. 4.2.1 Build id: 2006.03.01 and I'm trying the JFrame visual inheritance ... but I've a problem .... to re-create it perform the following steps:
1) create a standard JFrame named "Form1" using SpringLayout layout and drag on it two JButtons.
2) create a secondary JFrame named "Form2" that extends "Form1".
3) at this point the two parent component (Form1) buttons are correctly displayed
4) ... now, I don't succeed to drag any other Swing component on the designer

Why ?
Thanks.
Nicola.

[Eric Clayberg]

I'm using WBP v. 4.2.1 Build id: 2006.03.01 and I'm trying the JFrame visual inheritance ... but I've a problem .... to re-create it perform the following steps:
1) create a standard JFrame named "Form1" using SpringLayout layout and drag on it two JButtons.
2) create a secondary JFrame named "Form2" that extends "Form1".
3) at this point the two parent component (Form1) buttons are correctly displayed
4) ... now, I don't succeed to drag any other Swing component on the designer
Why ?

SpringLayout is not directly supported for visual inheritance.

I would suggest adding a panel to Form1 and using Expose Component to make that panel visible to Form2.

In Form2, you can then set the exposed panel to use SpringLayout and then add widgets to that.

[ncister]

Hi Eric, and thanks for replay ....

SpringLayout is not directly supported for visual inheritance.

... but does it will be supported in the near future ?

[Eric Clayberg]

will be supported in the near future ?

In the future (some time later this year), yes.

In the near future (in the next couple of weeks or months), no.

In the mean time, using a combination of visual inheritance and composition via inherited panels should allow you to create just about any interface that you want.

[ncister]

Hi Eric ....
I Re-play my old question ....
Does WBP (now, after two years, on v. 6.8.0) support Visual Inheritance with SpringLayout ?
After my previous posts I tried to use inherited panels but .... without results
Please, can you post an example with a JButton on Form1 (for example anchored on Bottom/Right) and a JTextFields on Form2 (for example anchored on Top/Left) ... ? ... using SpringLayout, of course ...
Thanks.
Nicola.

[Eric Clayberg]

Better support for SpringLayout never made it to the top of the list due to many other higher priority items.

On the bright side, we have been working on some major internal parsing engine improvements that will provide better, general support for visual inheritance and should make it much easier for us to implement visiual inheritance for SpringLayout.