Creating a FSA-design program. Should I go for Swing or SWT?

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

Hi!

I’m planning to create an application to handle Finite State Automatas.

For this I’ll have to create my own widget where in the actual automatas reside. This widget will hold:

  • Nodes. Circles which holds text inside.
  • Edges. An edge is a line connecting two nodes with a text describing the transition. The line may be a straight line or a bézier curve.

And you will be able to handle the widget contents using the following actions:

  • Create a node.
  • Delete a node.
  • Create an edge.
  • Delete an edge.
  • Change the text of a node/edge.
  • Drag a node to a new position.
  • Change an edge between being a straight line <=>bézier curve.
  • Change the curve of a bézier curve edge. By dragging the two control points.
  • Bring a node/edge forward. Puts the node/edge on layer forward.
  • Bring a node/edge back. Puts the node/edge on layer forward.
  • Bring a node/edge to front. Puts the node/edge on topmost layer.
  • Bring a node/edge to back. Puts the node/edge on bottommost layer.
  • Set/Unset a node as the start node. Marked by an arrow pointing at the node.
  • Set/Unset a node as an accepting state. The node will be drawn using double lines.

To see what it could look like I’ve attached a picture (which I in turn have snitched. It’s just an example). In the attached picture the circles with LR_x are Nodes and the lines with text like SS(B) and S(a) are Edges.

Now to my questions:

  • Do you think that I should go for Swing or SWT? Which one would result in the “best” program? (I know “best” is subjective) And which one would result in the easiest development? I am leaning towards SWT as I suspect it will give me a more responsive GUI with native look and feel. As long as I can publish my program for Windows, Linux and MacOS I’m satisfied.
  • Have you got any advice/tips which could be useful for me during the devlopment? (And if so, care to share? :wink: )
  • What do you think will be the hardest part of creating my widget?

Thank you for your time! I’ll appreciate all helping efforts!

#2

Swing :wink:

#3

If you want to write an edit application I would suggest to use one of the available graph frameworks:

If your focus is on visualization, you could utilize:

If you want to create such a framework yourself, the choice over SWT vs. Swing is a matter of personal taste and target audience. I doubt that there is a significant performance difference between the two in this usecase, since you will not use much of them, but implementing a repaint method and widget management yourself.

I would go for a good library and an application framework like NetBeans Platform, Eclipse RCP or Spring Rich Client. I find the NetBeans Platform the best, but it is only easy to use from within NetBeans IDE (at least at the start).