VisualMust ® - Written entirely in the JavaTM programming language.

Scope of Subsystems  

VisualMust is a multiplatform tool, composed of several subsystems that will be discussed in separate chapters. The Scope of Subsystems chapter offers a summary of the Interface Builder, the Recovery Manager, the UndoRedo Manager, the Properties Manager, the Events Manager, the Syntactical Editor, the Debugger, the Generator of JavaTM source code.

INTERFACE BUILDER

The VisualMust interface builder is a true WYSIWYG interface builder allowing you to design your application by using the Drag and Drop, Click operations, aso. With a true WYSIWYG interface builder, you are sure the position of any component will not change from click to click during the design phase or then when you actually run the resulting application.

The interface builder offers a menu bar and popup menus all at a right click away.

RECOVERY MANAGER

The VisualMust recovery manager has been designed to retrieve and restore your data in any circumstances, even after a system crash, a power failure, aso...

Data provided by the recovery manager are persistent information. With this feature you will be able to do regression, even if you have left the VisualMust environment, intentionally or not. That means that, if you change your mind after having left VisualMust, you are still able to undo your modifications.

The recovery manager is associated with a persistent undo/redo.

UNDO-REDO MANAGER

The undo-redo manager will use the recovery manager facilities. The undo-redo manager allows you to undo or redo any action you made with the interface builder (even between sessions). If a system crash occurs while you are creating a new design (i.e. a new ODB file), or updating a previous one, just re-start VisualMust and re-load your design : it will be automatically updated by the recovery manager.

PROPERTIES MANAGER

As you may guess, this provides you the way of changing the properties of the beans you use in your interface. We have done our best make it as user-friendly as possible. However, the properties manager offers much more functionalities. Its collaboration with the other managers included in VisualMust will allow these beans to take advantage of the undo-redo facility, the drag and drop support, automatic recovery and others. It is the properties manager that controls if a given component may or not be dropped to or from another one.

The properties manager supports any Customizer Dialogs or Custom Editor that may come with a given bean. One of the strength of VisualMust when compared with its competitors is certainly that this support is not restricted to the logical part of these editors but goes up to the visual part of them.

EVENTS MANAGER

While the most evident task of the Events Manager is to determine the list of events that a given component may generate and allow the designer to specify the ones he wants to handle, it performs numerous other tasks like instructing the code generator to use a specific adapter, implement a listener. It is also the Events Manager which is in charge of sharing the source code with developers, respecting user modifications, user preferences, and inserting methods that should process events.

SYNTACTIC EDITOR

VisualMust has a very powerful syntactic editor which has its own recovery system. While it is automatically called by the interface builder, you may also use it as a stand alone application.

DEBUGGER

As its competitors, VisualMust comes with a debugging tool. The graphical JavaTM debugger it offers is completely based on the Java Platform Debugger Architecture (JPDA) and Java Debug Interface (JDI). It offers you all the possibilities you may need to debug your applications or applets like break points setting, step by step execution, runtime data visualization and modification aso...

GENERATOR OF CODE

The VisualMust generator of code generates a nice looking «.java» file wich can be modified by VisualMust and developers. Even if a little part if this code is inserted by VisualMust , there is no reserved parts in it : you are totaly free to insert whatever you want at any place in this file.
The limitation in this freedom is reduced to its bare minimum. This file holding your work can be modified by any text editor without starting the VisualMust application. (You can however invoke the provided editor if you wish). It generates also a private file (that is a file you must not alter in any way) that, in fact will hold all the User Interface definition and implement an abstract class that your file will extend. This structure seems to be the best to use all the inteligence that has been put in the java architecture by its conceptors.

The generated code respects the Object programming recommendations. For every component you use in your User Interface, VisualMust will generate a get_<BeanName> method that will allow you to use this object at your convenience. Eg :

     get_MyComponent().setEnabled(false);
    

The use of this accessor guarantees that the corresponding object has been completely instantiated before it is returned to your application (if the above component was a container, then upon return of the get_MyComponent() method, the container and all the objects it holds are completely instantiated).

In order to help (or encourage) you documenting your work, VisualMust puts Javadoc comment blocks (mainly dummy) for all the methods it has created.