Haven't any of the UI builders gotten sofisticated enough that the layout of the UI can be made parametric? By parametric I mean that the placement of UI objects are defined with respect to each other instead of some absolute position in the window. Where the minimum size of a window is limited by the stackup of objects within it.

Java's built-in layout managers do this (mostly, anyway); the problem is not that everything has to be laid out absolutely, but rather that the restrictions which must be placed on things (button spacing, control height, button _ordering_ for things like OK and Cancel, etc) are completely different between Aqua, Windows, Metal and Motif; and so there are 2 choices:

1. Write 4 separate versions of the GUI classes, and distribute 4 versions of JEmplode.

2. Write one version which decides at runtime which layouts to use.

Neither is terribly convenient. Hence, we just have a single version right now, which does Metal. :(


-----
Daniel M. Zimmerman, Caltech Computer Science
Mk.2 #060000058, 36GB
Mk.1 #00101, 10GB