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emacs and java

I'm moderately new to Emacs and Netbeans. When you create a user interface for a program using Java and Emacs, does Emacs have a graphical design tool to create the user interface? I mentioned Netbeans b/c I have used their graphical design tool and can't find Emacs's.

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zwei

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dwcronin

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So if I understand this right - emacs is just an editor, as are vi, pine, and windows notebook,. They differ but it is just an opinion as to which one you use. Netbeans, Eclipse, and probably others on the other hand are IDEs. They contain an editor ( which might be one of the previously mentioned editors ) but they also have other features such as user interface designers. I won't say debuggers b/c I think Emacs has a debugger.

There is no graphical design tool in emacs but somehow you use the designers you gave me and somehow hook the results into source code you produce with emacs. Is that about it?

zwei

Yeah, you got it. If you're going to use emacs, you'll have to find an outside GUI builder and copy the code files into your project. The alternative is to code the GUI yourself in emacs.

With javafx, you can code nicer GUIs (I don't know if there is a GUI builder yet for javafx). But if you're going to code the GUI yourself, I'd suggest doing it in javafx.

dwcronin

ASKER

You just created some questions:
This is my first contact with javafx - I just looked it up on wikipedia and checked add/remove and synaptic and it doesn't look like javafx is available for ubuntu. Is that true? ( I'm trying to go cheap so I went to linux )

My understanding is that it is too error prone to do the GUI yourself and you're safer with a GUI designer. If that's not the general feeling, I'll grab a piece of graph paper and start drawing. What's your opinion?

zwei

No, javafx is not available for linux yet. There is a hack to get the mac OSX file to work under linux but I haven't tried it:
http://www.weiqigao.com/blog/2008/12/04/using_javafx_1_0_on_linux.html

Coding GUI in java can be very frustrating if you are doing complex swing GUIs. This is part of the reason why javafx was produced. I have created only simple swing GUIs in java and it works fine for me. It depends on what you are creating. It's always easier to use a designer, for sure.

zwei

It seems netbeans has a plugin for javafx as well:

http://javafx.netbeans.org/download-compiler-JFXplugin.html

dwcronin

ASKER

Thanks for all the help

zwei

No problem.