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Q: Is SDL/Swing stable and supported?

Yes. It comes from an internal library that was used for customer projects within Ikayzo for over three years. It has community support in the SDL/Swing Google Group and commercial support from Ikayzo.

Q: What is the "SDL" in SDL/Swing?

SDL standard for Simple Declarative Language. SDL is a language, SDL/Swing is a Java Swing framework that utilizes SDL for its component definitions.

Q: Why didn't you use XML?

Take a look at XAML or MXML and compare it to an equivalent definition in SDL/Swing. SDL/Swing definitions are much terser and easier to read.

Q: How do I create a component from an SDL definition?

Put your SDL/Swing file in resources/components and instantiate it like so:

Component c = UI.build("filename"); // Omit .sdl from the file name

Q: How do I create frames other than the main application frame?

Create an SDL file called SecondaryWindow.sdl and place it in your resources/components directory. Example contents:

frame {
	menus {
  		// put your menus here      
	}
	form ID="SecondaryWindow" {
  		// put the other window contents here
	}
}

...and in your Java code:

Frame frame = (Frame)UI.build("SecondaryWindow");

Q: In the above example, how do I get the FormController for the com.ooi.swing.Frame called SecondaryWindow?

The form ID is set to "SecondaryWindow" which means it will automatically look for SecondaryWindowController and wire it to the com.ooi.swing.Form instance set as that frame's content pane. To get the controller call:

SecondaryWindowController controller = (SecondaryWindowController)frame.getForm().getController();

Q: How do I create and access button groups?

SDL

radios group="colors" {
    "Red"
    "Green"
    "Blue"
}

Java

ButtonGroup colors = form.getGroup("colors");

Q: Why doesn't SDL/Swing have data binding?

There are already plenty of good data binding frameworks available that can be used with SDL/Swing. We may add a more fully integrated data binding framework in the future.

Q: Does SDL/Swing support localizations?

Localization will be supported in SDL/Swing 1.1.