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What I think would be *really* cool, where if Matisse offered the possiblity to export the generated layout to XML, and also provided a parser to turn the XML back into a layout. To apply the layout on my application I would have to use a 'GroupLayoutParser' that would parse the XML and ask my application for the components using some interface. My application would implement something like: Interface GroupLayoutComponentSupplier { public Component getComponent(String name); } And to populate the GUI I would call something like: File xmlfile = new File(mylayout.xml); JPanel panel = GroupLayoutParser.doLayoutPanel(xmlfile, this); // this instanceof GroupLayoutComponentSupplier That way I would get rid of all the autogenerated layout code, and be able to reuse a layout. Maybe I could even allow the users of the application to rearrange the gui as it no longer affects the code (as long as components are not added).
What I was not aware of, when I wrote the previous mail, is that the .form file contains the layout in xml. So I guess what I'm really requesting is a FormFileParser that will parse the .form file and requests the components from my application - then return a complete panel.
This feature will ease implementaion of MVC / PresentationModel pattern. http://martinfowler.com/eaaDev/PresentationModel.html