Archived
March 1998
R.I.P.:
Spring Layout, Target Manager
Two Swing services -- the SpringLayout manager and the Target
manager -- failed to keep up with the pack during the development
of Swing. So we have reluctantly dropped them from the Swing component
set.
Farewell, SpringLayout manager
We
deleted SpringLayout manager because it had several serious
design problems. The biggest problem was that SpringLayout did not
set any initial size and position information for the components
it managed. This behavior was contrary to the way in which all other
AWT and Swing layout managers work, and thus had been a source of
confusion among developers.
The SpringLayout manager also deviated in several unusual ways
from most other "springs-and-struts" tools, and we didn't
like that either. We concluded that these deviations should be fixed
before the Swing API freeze locked the SpringLayout manager into
place -- we also concluded that there wasn't enough time. So the
SpringLayout manager was pulled altogether.
Target manager, rest in peace
We dropped the Target
manager because there wasn't enough time to write good examples
of Target manager operations or to provide comprehensive documentation
for the Target manager API. At press time, we hadn't received any
feedback at all from developers about the Target manager, and we
didn't think the tool had been tested enough to freeze it in its
current state for the FCS release of Swing.
We hope that dropping these two managers won't impact many customers.
But we realize that some developers may have used them -- especially
the SpringLayout manager -- in Swing programs. That's why we're
providing the source
code for these two managers with this issue of The Swing Connection.
If you have any comments or complaints about our deleting these
two APIs, please send them to our swing-feedback
address -- and if you decide to make any improvements in the source
code we're providing during the course of maintaining the code,
we would particularly appreciate your sending us any revisions in
the code that you'd like to share.
|