

Clojure Desktop Applications with Swing - micahalles
http://spin.atomicobject.com/2011/12/14/clojure-desktop-applications-with-swing/

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parfe
I spent a couple years on a Java Swing project and hated every minute. Karsten
Lentzsch provided the only saving grace with the JGoodies libraries and seesaw
supports the JGoodies Forms.

I just started writing some Clojure in my free time and I hadn't looked into
GUI toolkits yet, but this definitely provides a great jump start. Bringing
enlive's selector style to Swing widgets will make life livable again.

~~~
VMG
One should add MigLayout to the list of painkillers

<http://www.miglayout.com/>

~~~
salzo
I think if you have to work with Swing, you definitely have to go with the
Netbeans Swing GUI Builder. I have worked in some Swing projects and it has
been a joy to use. It comes out of the box with the IDE.

~~~
daveray
Among other things, Seesaw 1.3 will hopefully have friendlier support for
pulling in UIs laid out with UI builders (NetBeans, the Google one in Eclipse,
etc).

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daveray
If you want to get a feel for the Seesaw API, I recently wrote an interactive
tutorial: <https://gist.github.com/1441520>

~~~
bwanab
I walked through it last weekend. Very good tutorial. Seesaw will definitely
take much of the pain out of swing development.

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raju
There was another article on HN recently featuring Clarity (not seesaw)

[http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/scala/lightening-talk-
clarit...](http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/scala/lightening-talk-clarity-a-
wrapper-for-swing)

Edit- Found the HN discussion - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3303352>

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jurre
I cringe every time I have to make a Swing GUI for Java projects at my uni. It
might just be me, but I can never get them to look half decent.

~~~
Kototama
The Nimbus theme does not look so bad, otherwise you can still set the native
theme.
[http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/lookandfeel/n...](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/lookandfeel/nimbus.html)

I wrote an article last year on how to design the dialogs with Netbeans and
write the code with Clojure:
[http://inclojurewetrust.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-to-build-
gu...](http://inclojurewetrust.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-to-build-gui-with-
netbeans-and.html)

~~~
veeti
The "native theme" still looks poor and out of place.

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ww520
Why not wrap Clojure on top of SWT? The native look and feel would look
better. And if the interactive and incremental nature of Clojure can be weaved
in, it would be fantastic for UI development.

~~~
scottjad
GUIFTW wraps SWT and Swing for Clojure.

<https://github.com/santamon/GUIFTW>

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jamesbritt
If you're using JRuby you need to check out Monkeybars:
<http://monkeybars.org>.

I'm the project owner and I need to see what ideas Seesaw might have to steal.

~~~
daveray
I hope you find something useful. When I started Seesaw, I spent some time
studying Monkeybars for ideas to steal. :)

~~~
jamesbritt
Oh good! Closure's been on my To Learn periphery, and I wondered if Monkeybars
could be adapted for it, or if the general ideas (e.g. decoupling concerns;
using dynamic look-up to drive compiled GUI classes so a WYSIWYG editor can be
used) could be employed.

~~~
daveray
Clojure's wonderful. Give it a try if you get a chance. :)

~~~
jamesbritt
I've been hinting to the wife that for Christmas I want an extra 4 hours every
day to get stuff done. :)

~~~
daveray
Ha! Good luck with that. If I tried that, I'd probably get a divorce for
Christmas :)

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mgkimsal
A bit off topic, but I've had some fun playing with Griffon -
<http://griffon.codehaus.org/> \- Swing apps with Groovy.

