Agreed IB is a great tool (especially for Cocoa development) however
the nib4j tool turns a nib into source code which is a very un-IB
like thing to do.
Please let me revise some statements about nib4j.
First of all, nib4j doesn't generate source code out of a nib file. All nib
files are loaded at runtime and the Swing GUI will always be created on the
fly. The built-in internationalization mechanism determines which nib files
are loaded.
So, there are just a view lines of code needed to load a nib file and show a
frame:
// load nib file
NibFile nib = NibService.loadNibFile("Test");
// create and show frame
JFrame win = (JFrame) nib.createWindow("TestWindow");
win.setVisible(true);
It's of course true that one has to use a Mac to design the interface. But
the created Swing GUI is cross-platform compatible. On Mac OS X nib4j uses
SpringLayout to build the user interface. On every other system the famous
FormLayout (https://forms.dev.java.net/) is used.
Manuel
