Scope framework

Scope is an open source (BSD license) Java framework that extends Swing. I've never liked Swing, and have successfully avoided having to code to it. Swing just seems insanely code-heavy to me, with the need for tons of small anonymous controller glue objects. Ick.

Scope seems to largely eliminate the need for those glue objects. It binds model objects to view objects. This means, for example, little (no?) extra code is necessary to have an editable text field populate an object's instance variable. And it works in reverse, as well -- it's easy to dump an object's ivar into a display widget. Shades of WebObjects/Cocoa.

Data validation is supported (very necessary). Also interesting is that full-two way synchronization is supported. Update an object or container, and the GUI (view) is automatically updated. To my knowledge, even Cocoa doesn't do this.

Sunday, March 02, 2003
01:28 PM