Hello,
As also mentioned in the proposal, there are already 3rd party RTAs -
RichTextFX and Gluon's. Does the proposed RTA offer more than these
(besides the ease of use by being in JavaFX)? Do the building blocks
of these offer advantages that the proposed building blocks don't? An
abstract test that can be done is to see if these controls can be
"retrofitted" with the proposed new building blocks (no need to
actually rewrite the code). If not, it could hint to an
incompatibility or a limit of the proposal that makes it less appealing.
- Gluon's RTA is dual-licensed, so unlike OpenJFX, it is not free for
commercial projects (even internal non-profit projects). It can't be an
alternative, because of this alone.
- RichTextFX depends on several long-unmaintained libraries, namely
ReactFX. There is nothing that can be done from the OpenJFX side, as it
would require rewriting RichTextFX from scratch.
I don't think anyone expects OpenJFX to provide something as complex as
CodeMirror. However, having a basic rich text control with reasonable
extension points would already be a significant improvement.
On 14/08/2024 16.03, Nir Lisker wrote:
My questions are similar to the ones in the previous discussion, but
now I can be more specific.
I see a list of "building blocks" in
https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8300569, which I like.
Specifically, two types of building blocks additions are important as
I see it: rich text-specific ones like document models and a way to
add decorations/colors etc., and the split of controls in general into
skin/input/behavior (on which there has been a long discussion). My
questions are:
1. If these are provided to the user, how difficult is it for them to
compose a RTA? JavaFX doesn't provide some somewhat-common controls
that you see in various other libraries with the reasoning that the
library should give the user the ability to create their own controls
(which is not so easy right now). Is RTA an exception, like
ColorPicker and DatePicker?
2. Can these building blocks be used to enhance existing controls? For
example, to help with TextArea's performance with long texts, or allow
rich text-like features in other controls, like the squiggly red line
under the text in a TextField?
3. As also mentioned in the proposal, there are already 3rd party RTAs
- RichTextFX and Gluon's. Does the proposed RTA offer more than these
(besides the ease of use by being in JavaFX)? Do the building blocks
of these offer advantages that the proposed building blocks don't? An
abstract test that can be done is to see if these controls can be
"retrofitted" with the proposed new building blocks (no need to
actually rewrite the code). If not, it could hint to an
incompatibility or a limit of the proposal that makes it less appealing.
Thanks,
Nir
On Fri, Aug 2, 2024 at 10:41 PM Andy Goryachev
<andy.goryac...@oracle.com> wrote:
Dear fellow developers:
Thank you for the early feedback on the RichTextArea proposal [0].
We are moving to the next phase by submitting the public pull
request [1].The main goal is to include the new control in an
incubating module [8], hopefully in jfx24, as a means of putting
non-final API in the hands of developers while the API and
implementation progress towards either finalization or removal in
a future release.
For your convenience, two test applications are provided -
*RichTextAreaDemoApp* and *CodeAreaDemoApp* which demonstrate the
new controls with a number of different models.In addition to
these two testers, please check out a simple standalone rich text
editor application, *RichEditorDemoApp*,
We would encourage anyone - the javafx developers, and especially
the application developers, to take a look at the public API
[3].It's probably less important at this stage to do a deep code
review of the implementation, but we would certainly appreciate
and welcome your code review comments.
Thank you in advance,
-andy
[0] Proposal:
https://github.com/andy-goryachev-oracle/Test/blob/main/doc/RichTextArea/RichTextArea.md
[1] Pull request: https://github.com/openjdk/jfx/pull/1524
[2] Discussion points:
https://github.com/andy-goryachev-oracle/Test/blob/main/doc/RichTextArea/RichTextAreaDiscussion.md
[3] API specification (javadoc):
https://cr.openjdk.org/~angorya/RichTextArea/javadoc
[4] CSS Reference:
https://cr.openjdk.org/~angorya/RichTextArea/javadoc/javafx.graphics/javafx/scene/doc-files/cssref.html
[5] Behavior doc:
https://github.com/andy-goryachev-oracle/jfx/blob/8301121.RichTextArea/doc-files/behavior/RichTextAreaBehavior.md
[6] RichTextArea RFE: https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8301121
<https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8301121>
[7] Previous (now obsolete) draft pull request:
https://github.com/openjdk/jfx/pull/1374
[8] Incubator module JEP:
https://github.com/kevinrushforth/jfx/blob/javafx.incubator/INCUBATOR-MODULES.md
