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1. I think issues with Matisse are not the point of the poll - notice the word "should".
Issues with Matisse are, IMHO bugs (which I trust have been logged....)
2. So, assuming, no bugs, completeness issues, performance issues (all of which are, in fact, IMHO bugs) why wouldn't you completely "live" in Matisse for layout?
Personally, I can't see why you wouldn't - layout is inherently graphical, and thus the tool to create it should be graphical.
I also think that Matisse has a design flaw in that it doesn't put its layout code in its own class, and, by default only produce the .class file for the layout class (i.e. no .java file) - simplify the code that developers need to access by eliminating (moving) bits that you can't edit anyway. Of course, the layout java code should be available for examination for the curious as an option, but don't leave it around unless requested.
In other words, IMHO, developers should treat layout code just like bytecode, binary - a lower level, uninteresting technical detail, generally, but one that had better Just Work, and be complete, performant etc. And if you can make the generated code perform better by doing something that makes it look funky, go for it - its not supposed to be human readable, any more than highly optimized binary/bytecode is.
3. Its great that people were able to manually workaround the lack of Matisse (after all, while Matisse is excellent, it was unbelievably late arriving, so these skills were critical for a number of years). But now that Matisse is here, we need to move on - get the Matisse bugs/flaws fixed, such as exist, and stop doing layouts by hand, IMHO. Surely there are more difficult, higher level problems to solve.
We don't write bytecode by hand, after all, except in extreme, highly justified circumstances, today. Why would layout code be any different?
4. I think the same thing about html, too - I want Matisse for web (and Ruby, GWT, Java FX etc.) - lets make Matisse support pluggable target languages, and support graphically rich web page style backgrounds - how about a Java rich client that looks and feels like a web client? These are, however, other topics.
While on the topic of Matisse extensions, we need the ability to right click on all components and access the controller logic for that component. And the controller logic should be nicely bundled up in a class for easy editing - some circumstances will naturally suggest Matisse based access to the controller (particularly initially), while others will naturally suggest a traditional editor. |
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