Is there a scripting tool to build GUIs?

[Sn0tters]

Sorry for the cross post but java.gui is an extremely quiet group.

Hi,

I looking at writing an app and I have had an idea about the gui, but I
want to check if it's been done before. None of my googling has come up
with anything.

My app has the gui running in a seperate thread, which talks to the
main part of the app using RMI.

I was thinking of writing the UI so that the graphical part of it would
be constructed using a script, so that users could then change the
functionality of it in the future.

The script would basically expose the RMI interface so that windows,
buttons and user events, etc could be mapped on to RMI messages.

There would obviously have to be logic then to define how the various
components interact, maybe in a MVC kind of way.

Anyway, does anyone know if such a thing already exists?

Thanks
Wil

 

[HK]

The obvious answer to the question supplied in the subject is:

www.tcl.tk

I was thinking of writing the UI so that the graphical part of it would
be constructed using a script, so that users could then change the
functionality of it in the future.

I guess you are then looking for Java scripting (not to
be confused with javascript, of course) for which you
could then try

http://sourceforge.net/projects/tcljava/

or, if you like python better:

http://www.jython.org/

Harald.

 

[Sn0tters]

Thanks for the reply.

I'm not sure if Tcl is really what I'm after, so in that respect I'll
change my mispleading subject!

I'm really looking to write / ( use someone else's ) library that will
allow the flow of a GUI to be stored in flat files so that ordinary
users can easily adapt it to their own look and feel. If I am to write
my own I'd like to make it so that other developers could easily use it
as well, hopefully by just popping it ( pretty much ) on to their RMI.

Also in that respect and knowing my end users, I'd like to make it easy
to change the look ( read skin, widgets ) which I think is not suited
to Tcl.

Cheers
Wil