Docking Skin - Video Tutorial

Hi all,

First of all is to say that we have decided to write some posts in english and some posts in spanish. We apologize for possible errors when writting in english.

One of the integration problems of the 3D extension in gvSIG was the windowing system. The 3D graphics windows are usually dependents on the operative system. So in Java/Swing and using JInternalFrame for the user interface, is not possible to merge correctly the system dependent windows and the Swing painted windows.

There exists various solutions:

• GLJPanel: This is the adopted solution in JDialogSkin. JOGL (The java api used to create 3D windows), allows us to create a JPanel that merges correctly with swing and also allows to draw OpenGL. The problem is that under linux the performance of the system is really slow, and only is useful in parts where the view doesn't changes so much. The maximize buttons are not available in some platforms.
• Docking System based on Swing: A docking windowing system fits all the application views inside a main window. Usually this systems allows the personalization of the views and even undock some windows. The gvSIG Docking skin is based on Infonode Docking Windows [1].
  

Currently most applications are designed in the same way, OpenOffice manage multiple documents but you can only work with the active in a specific window.

This first video tutorial is centered in how docking skin works. No layers are added but three different views are created and managed in different modes.






[1] http://www.infonode.net/index.html?idw