Nested Widgets

Hi. First of all, great job! And now: It is possible to nest widgets? From a xml point of view, how could I know if a button is "inside" a window? I'm thinking about import the ecore model into a xtext model to generate my own code!

Regards, Nicol

Hi Nicol

That's a pity... Is there any widget on which I could nest a widget? Besides a group, of course. If not, couldn't that be a great improvement to the product? Nesting is not a uncommon concept wireframing window controls, and could ease the conversion to another "executable" formats!

I might implement it someday but I am not yet convinced it's a good idea. WireframeSketcher is a mix of a GUI builder and a drawing tool. This allows for a lot of flexibility that you don't have in a straightforward GUI builder. I am afraid that implementing containers will make the tool less flexible and less usable without much gain.

I think it shouldn't be that hard to use geometric constraints to deduce parent - child relationships. You just take the Window widget and test for containment all widgets that follow in XML.

Navigating a model tree is a lot easier than make the calculations :), but I will try your solution. May be you could put a "parent" attribute, instead of nested widgets? Sorry, but I must ask :)

Nicol

Use your great tool, of course :)

We would like to convert your screens XML to our own DSL. We are using this tool: http://www.eclipse.org/Xtext/ to construct the DSL From that DSL we could generate any code. A real HTML with ExtJS, for instance (http://www.sencha.com/products/extjs/).

My goal is something like:

window { panel [layout=vertical] { panel [layout=horizontal] { Label ... TextField ... } panel [layout=horizontal] { Button .... } } }

Does this clarify anything?

Nicol

"I have yet to see a system that works" -> I'm a dreamer :) I'll drop you an email, your code will be of a great help! Thanks Peter.

Nicol

Ok Peter, many thanks.

Hi Nicol

Hi Peter.

We build some code to simulate the nesting based on the position of the objects, but it was unreliable because the drawing itself is not always exact. Some times the mockup is ok visually, but the coordinates aren't. So, I like the news about the Open Source java code! How could I get it?

Nicol