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I've been taking a look at Apache Pivot and I'm wondering whether it is ready to be used as a Swing replacement (given that Swing and SwingX development goes ever so slow -- almost dormant).

Has anyone tried it out? Do you know about any drag-and-drop GUI designer for RAD with Apache Pivot?

Thank you.

Jason S
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user1178114
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    It looks like it depends on what you want to develop. From my reading, Pivot appears to be more in competition with Flex, Silverlight, and applets, than with desktop development. – Hovercraft Full Of Eels Jan 30 '12 at 13:18
  • Greetings, my hungarian-speaking friend :) Actually, what I'm curious about is if Apache Pivot can be used as a drop-in replacement for Swing for use in Desktop applications. Since I read that it can be done with JavaFX too, I very curious about hearing if anyone has been using Pivot as a GUI toolkit for desktop applications... – user1178114 Jan 30 '12 at 13:27
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    nothing and nobody dormant in the SwingX realm. It's open source, so if you think it should move at a quicker pace - feel free to contribute :-) – kleopatra Jan 30 '12 at 13:28
  • @kleopatra I'm ever so happy to hear that (and to hear it from the legendary kleopatra herself! You're quite a celebrity when swing[x] is the topic!); unfortunately, I'm not skilled enough to contribute to the project... Sorry if me saying that it goes too slow was inappropriate, I didn't mean any disrespect: I still see SwingX as a amazingly powerful extension to the Swing graphical toolkit. I'm just in a phase where I'm evaluating alternatives,just to be up-to-date – user1178114 Jan 30 '12 at 13:34
  • Have you considered SWT? – Marcelo Jan 30 '12 at 13:43
  • @Marcelo I need UI to look exactly the same on all platforms and, as far as I know, SWT relies on the underlying OS APIs to render its [heavyweight?] components, with a platform-dependent look... – user1178114 Jan 30 '12 at 13:53
  • @user1178114 Indeed, SWT relies on the OS to render the components and it looks (a bit) different on every OS. Looks better than Swing though, IMO, but if you *really* need it to be exactly the same (may I ask why?) its probably not an option. – Marcelo Jan 30 '12 at 14:01
  • @Marcelo Simply because it's a company policy I've no control upon – user1178114 Jan 30 '12 at 14:04

2 Answers2

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Apache Pivot is not a good tool to create GUIs. I've tried it and I've spent several hours persisting in it's potential that is said, however, finally I built the interface from scratch without any tools.

I would like to suggest WindowBuilder. I sucessfuly worked with it, in another, huge, desktop software. Sure this is my opinion, but I have some experience in building GUIs, specially in Swing. Just to be clear, I am not affiliated with the software, and this is not an advertisment, this tool simply works!

Lincoln
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    About my answer above, I'm aware that WindowBuilder uses Swing SDK, and makes easier the work with it, instead of providing another SDK. But that is the point, isn't it? – Lincoln Jan 31 '12 at 16:54
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It's possible to create a good desktop GUI with Apache Pivot. Of course, I'm coming to Pivot almost a year after Lincoln Pompermaier, so I'm sure Pivot has improved.

Apache Pivot needs a good tutorial so that people will understand how to use it. Since Pivot is open source, I might just write that tutorial myself.

I've never used a GUI builder. I wrote all of my Swing GUIs by hand, and I'll probably write all of my Pivot GUIs by hand.

Gilbert Le Blanc
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