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Visual Library API - Architecture Review Opinion

Issue: 95110

Submitter: David Kaspar

Date: March 8th, 2007

Reviewers: Joelle Lam, Anton Epple, Nathan Fiedler, Milos Kleint, Jaroslav Tulach (not voting)

Content

Summary
Decision
Opinion
Minority Opinion
Appendixes

Summary

Motivation

The purpose of this API is to create a library for easier development of visual applications based on the NetBeans Platform. Long-term goal is to provide tools to unify the UI appearance and behaviour of those applications.

Decision

Accepted with TCRs

Opinion

Renaming of non-standard names

Some names of methods/classes are non-standard e.g. FillLayout.
TCR: Change those names to standard ones e.g. OverlayLayout.
This will introduce an backward-incompatible change against the release551 branch.

Missing support for ActionMap

ActionMap class is a standard and should be integrated into the library.
TCR: Create an ActionFactory.createActionMapAction method which creates a wrapper widget-action that handles keyPressed and popup-menu creation.

Move deprecated classes from the public API

The library contains a few deprecated classes and methods.
TCR: Since there would be incompatible-change already, move these deprecated (to-be-changed) classes to non-public API packages. Users would be able to access them suing the implementation dependency.

VMD package

The library contains a VMD package. It is a particular implementation of a visualization.
Answer: do NOT move it to a separate module, do NOT rename it
TCR: Improve javadoc

Public, non-final classes/methods

The library contains a lot of non-public or final elements.
Answer: Because of API maintaince, it should stay like it is right now.
An API change request could be sent to the users@graph.netbeans.org mailing list or entered as an issue with API_REVIEW or API_REVIEW_FAST keywords.
The API change process will follow standard or fast-tract review steps. For details, see Architecture Review Steps.