src/content/platform/articles/nbm_interview_emilian.html - netbeans-website-cleanup - Git at Google

 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
     <head>
         <!-- -*- xhtml -*- -->
         <title>Meet a NetBeans Module Writer: Emilian Bold</title>
         <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://netbeans.org/netbeans.css">
         <meta name="AUDIENCE" content="NBUSER">
         <meta name="TYPE" content="ARTICLE">
         <meta name="EXPIRES" content="N">
         <meta name="AUTHOR" content="Geertjan Wielenga">
         <meta name="developer" content="gwielenga@netbeans.org">
         <meta name="indexed" content="y">
         <meta name="description"
         content="">
         <!--      Copyright (c) 2005 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. -->
         <!--     Use is subject to license terms.-->
     </head>
     <body>
     <h1>Meet a NetBeans Module Writer: Emilian Bold</h1>
     <p><small><a href="mailto:nbdocs_feedback@usersguide.netbeans.org?subject=Feedback:%20Meet%20A%20NetBeans%20Module%20Writer:%20Emilian">Feedback</a></small></p>

     <table width="210" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" align="right" class="ltblue">
         <tbody>
             <tr>
                 <td align="center"><img align="center" src="nbm_interviews/emilian/emilian.png" alt="Emilian's picture">

                 <br><b>Emilian Bold</b></td>
             </tr>
             <tr>
                 <td>Emilian's Hot Links:
                 <ul>
                     <li><a href="http://emilian-bold.blogspot.com/">EBJb: Emilian Bold Java blog</a>
                     <li><a href="http://web.info.uvt.ro/~fierarul/typo3/">My Homepage</a>
                 </ul>

             </tr>


         </tbody>
     </table>

     <p>Emilian Bold from Romania has been using NetBeans IDE and
     the NetBeans Platform for many years. Recently he ported a
     Swing application to the NetBeans Platform. Here, he shares
     his general experiences with NetBeans, as well as some
     pleasant discoveries made while porting his application. He
     also talks about <a href="https://netbeans.org/download/dev/javadoc/">
     NetBeans Javadoc</a> and how useful he has found it while
     using the NetBeans APIs.</p>

     <p><h3>Emilian... where in the world are you and what do you
     do there?</h3>

     <p>Hi! I live in Timisoara, Romania. (Click <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=timisoara,+romania&ie=UTF8&ll=45.756385,21.211681&spn=0.013145,0.043259&t=h&om=1">here</a>
     for directions!) I work fulltime
     as a Java programmer for Alcatel Timisoara and
     I freelance once in a while.

     <p><h3>Are you active in the Java community there?</h3>

     <p>Sadly, there is no vibrant Java community in Timisoara.
     There are lots of people programming in Java, to my knowledge,
     both Java ME and Java EE, but we don't have anything formal,
     like a Java User Group (JUG).

     <p>I've talked to some people that have been planning to start a
     JUG (more on the Java EE side) but I don't think it is wise to
     make an estimate of when that will happen right now. It will
     probably happen in the next year, with some investment from a
     startup.

     <p><h3>How did you first get acquainted with NetBeans IDE?</h3>

     <p>It's actually quite a funny story. Initially I had a really
     lousy PC and, because I had learned Java from some certification
     books I found at our university's library, I used Notepad with
     <tt>javac</tt> and after that <tt>JCreator</tt> for a
     while.

     <p>I later managed to get a "smuggled" copy of NetBeans on a CD
     from some older guys working in a small startup. It was amazing.
     I had no idea what "Bean Patterns" did but it was very nice...
     and very slow on my PC. This is how I found out about the modular
     structure of NetBeans, the fact that you can disable modules to
     free some RAM, and thus I learned about the NetBeans Platform.

     <p><h3>And what about the NetBeans Platform? How did you get
     started with that and why?</h3>

     <p>Initially the NetBeans Platform represented, to me, the core of NetBeans
     that allowed me to "disable" the other memory hungry modules...

     <p>However, since it was open-sourced, I started reading about it
     and got to the Javadoc files. Those files are the lesser known
     hidden gems in the docs! As a trainee, I started printing the
     Javadoc HTML files one by one for each API... Nodes... Actions...
     etc... For example, these ones are good:

     <p><ul>
         <li><a href="https://netbeans.org/download/dev/javadoc/org-openide-modules/org/openide/modules/doc-files/api.html">Modules API</a>
         <li><a href="https://netbeans.org/download/dev/javadoc/org-openide-modules/org/openide/modules/doc-files/api.html">Utilities API</a>
         <li><a href="https://netbeans.org/download/dev/javadoc/org-openide-nodes/org/openide/nodes/doc-files/api.html">Nodes API</a>
         <li><a href="https://netbeans.org/download/dev/javadoc/org-openide-windows/org/openide/windows/doc-files/api.html ">Window System API</a>
     </ul>

     <p>I like the idea of having everything pluggable, with
     dependecies among modules and integrated into a single tool.

     <p>My first project was a report generator on top of the
     Platform, the 3.6 release. After that, I skipped the 4.x release
     and then returned with NetBeans 5.0. There is a huge difference
     between the two. 5.0, and above, is much more friendly towards
     module developers. It took me days years ago to do and learn
     something that is automatically generated now with a simple wizard.

     <p><h3>What are some of the things you've done with the
     NetBeans Platform?</h3>

     <p>One thing I did was... port a Swing application to the
     NetBeans Platform! It is an image processing application.
     Here is a screenshot of the ported application on the
     NetBeans Platform:

     <p><img border="1" align="center" src="nbm_interviews/emilian/gimage.png" alt="gimage">

     <p><h3>What's the story behind this application?</h3>

     <p>Well, during my re-introduction to 5.0, I needed a simple project
     to play with. So I took a project I did with my
     fellow student Mihaela Gander during
     my university studies. Together, we had built an image processing
     application. Now, to reacquaint myself with the NetBeans Platform,
     I tried to port it over to the NetBeans Platform.


     <p>It's not actually finished yet, since I want to give it to my
     students to be enhanced further when school starts at the
     university in October. I'll teach a class or two there, about Java,
     and hopefully pitch the NetBeans Platform.

     <div style="float: right;"><img src="nbm_interviews/emilian/quote2.png" alt="quote 2"></div>

     <p>By the way, the fact that the
     NetBeans Platform is modular makes it excellent
     for this kind of job&#8212;each student or pair may do their
     own module and at the end you get a full application with lots
     of independent modules for different image operations.

     <p><h3>How was it to port the application to the NetBeans Platform?</h3>

     <p>Well, the porting was quite easy&#8212;I had
     a JDesktop with some
     JInternalFrames and I already had a home-made way of defining
     actions with their own place in the menu etc, which is
     a "poor man's platform", so to speak. So all I had to do was
     convert JInternalFrame to TopComponent
     and then use the NetBeans IDE wizards for the Actions.

     <p>I took the easy way with a CallableSystemAction since there
     are only two kinds of TopComponents&#8212;image or
     histogram&#8212;but I would like to replace them with proper
     CookieActions.

     <p>Other than that, since it was pure Swing, nothing had to be
     altered. I'm now using the <tt>META-INF/services</tt> to allow
     outside modules to implement new operations and then rely on
     the Lookup.

     <p>Hopefully it will become a good teaching tool&#8212;with the
     new scripting engines in JDK 6, students could make small scripts
     to test the newly learned filters, etc. The scripting part is
     not implemented yet, hopefully it will be done by October.

     <p>And the new full screen mode really comes in handy for images!

     <p><h3>Have you done anything else with the NetBeans Platform?</h3>

     <p>The current project I'm slowly working on is a mind mapping
     application, using the great <a href="http://graph.netbeans.org/">
     NetBeans Visual Library</a>. Here's what the application looks
     like right now:

     <p><img border="1" align="center" src="nbm_interviews/emilian/eMind.png" alt="emind">

     <p><h3>What is mind mapping and how does it relate to this
     application?</h3>

     <p>Mind mapping is just a simple way to present ideas by using
     links between notions or words, using different colors, icons,
     node sizes and shapes (go
     <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_mapping">here</a> for
     details).

     <p>Basically, I'm planning to heavily use the
     <a href="http://graph.netbeans.org/">NetBeans Visual Library</a>,
     but currently David Kaspar, the NetBeans engineer responsible for this
     library, is still working on it, especially
     the Javadoc side. So, I'm just going to wait a little. My code
     uses pieces from the examples, so there isn't much worthy or
     actually not that much that is mine or original. I use pieces
     from the examples while waiting for some
     docs or tutorial to learn more about how I can customize
     the display of the nodes or links, to make them look better.

     <p><h3>What do you enjoy about using the NetBeans Platform?</h3>

     <p>I enjoy the fact that everything is already
     made&#8212;menu items that enable/disable, toolbar buttons,
     modules that can be updated from the web. For me, once a
     desktop application gets an (auto)update
     feature, it's in a whole other segment.
     <div style="float: right;"><img src="nbm_interviews/emilian/quote3.png" alt="quote 3"></div>
     <p>There is so much useful code there that it would have
     taken ages to write it yourself. Of course, that also means
     learning the APIs...

     <p>By the way, I'm also a fan of dismantling
     NetBeans! Lots of good code there, with no need
     to be tied to a
     particular platform or framework. For example,
     I've extracted the Progress API to a standalone version and
     open sourced it at <a href="http://progress-api.dev.java.net">progress-api.dev.java.net</a>.
     I'm also glad someone extracted the
     Window system. Something else: <tt>org-openide-util.jar</tt>
     is also great with the Lookup in standalone applications.</p>

     <p><h3>What are some of the problems you encountered while working
     with NetBeans IDE or the NetBeans Platform?</h3>

     <p>On the IDE side, I struggled a lot initially with my weak
     PC and the fact that NetBeans was quite heavy for the RAM.
     This looks like peanuts now, with 2GB RAM on my laptop,
     but for lesser PCs, it's tough. Thinking back now, I think it
     was wise not to dumb-down the IDE just the make it faster. The
     feature list is impressive and the design
     excellent, so some CPU cycles don't matter, in retrospect.

     <p>On the NetBeans Platform side, 3.6 was quite hard to program even if
 there was a freely-downloadable book written with 3.5 in mind. Of
 course, that 3.6 made most of the examples unusable.

     <p><h3>How did you solve these problems?</h3>

     <p>Regarding NetBeans IDE, I just saved some money and bought a
     new PC...

     <p>For the NetBeans Platform, I've read many times the
     Javadoc (damn that unfortunate "cookie" word!) and then the
     book. In the end, it started making sense and I could read the
     Javadoc with some ease. But I still learn new things as I read
     the mailing list or a new tutorial.

     <p><h3>Can you share some code snippets? Maybe some tips and tricks
     of the APIs you've been working with? </h3>

     <p>Well, a little thing I've blogged about
     (<a href="http://emilian-bold.blogspot.com/2006/08/netbeans-platform-statuslineelementpro.html">here</a>)
     is how to add your own status bar component in a NetBeans Platform application with the
     help of <tt>StatusLineElementProvider</tt>. Basically, you just create the
     <tt>META-INF/services</tt> folders in the <tt>src/</tt> folder and add the
     <tt>org.openide.awt.StatusLineElementProvider</tt> file with the name of your
     implementing class.

     <p>Next, in your implementing class you just need to implement the
     <tt>StatusLineElementProvider</tt> interface and return your Component in
     <tt>getStatusLineElement()</tt>. It's easy as hell with a trick&#8212;how do you
     determine the order of the items in the statusbar? Well, you rely on the
     Lookup (described <a href="https://netbeans.org/download/dev/javadoc/org-openide-util/org/openide/util/doc-files/api.html#service-lookup">here</a>),
     via the <tt>#position</tt> enhancement.

     <p>Basically, the file will contain first your class and then a numeric position:

     <p><pre class="examplecode">com.example.program.YourClass
 #position=SomeNumber</pre>

     <p>And then the NetBeans Platform will add components to the status bar/line starting
     with the smallest number. Just keep in mind that the Progress API has
     a component with position <tt>-13</tt> so usually you would use a smaller
     (that is, negative) number.

     <p><h3>Other tips?</h3>

     <p>Well, this made me smile recently: How do you get rid of the build
     number from a NetBeans Platform application's titlebar? Normally that
     is a branding operation. So you would go to
     <tt>org-netbeans-core-windows.jar</tt> in the module suite's
     <tt>branding</tt> folder, edit the <tt>Bundle.properties</tt> file and play
     with <tt>CTL_MainWindow_Title</tt> and <tt>CTL_MainWindow_Title_No_Project</tt>.

     <p>However, I recently read about another solution&#8212;in your module installer's
     <tt>restored()</tt> method, just put something like this:

     <p><pre class="examplecode">System.setProperty("netbeans.buildnumber", "")</pre>

     <p>This works! (Unless the user disables your module...) This shows that
     sometimes there is more than one way to do the
     branding. However, the person that discovered this trick must surely have grep-ed the source code
     to discover it. Go open source!</p>

     <p><h3>Anything else?</h3>

     <p>A nice thing about the Options Dialog API is that it allows invalid
         states via the <a href="https://netbeans.org/download/dev/javadoc/org-netbeans-modules-options-api/org/netbeans/spi/options/OptionsPanelController.html#isValid()">isValid</a>
         method. This is a great way to signal to the user that something
         isn't filled correctly. And the NetBeans Platform helps, by disabling the OK button
         and providing only the Cancel. As soon as the Option panel gets into a
         stable state, and isValid() returns true, the OK button is enabled again.

         <p>If you use the Options Panel wizard, you basically have to call
         <tt>controller.changed()</tt> once the valid-status has changed, which will
         notify the listeners. Otherwise you have to fire a property change for
         <tt>PROP_VALID</tt>.</p>

     <p><h3>Have you tried to introduce the NetBeans Platform
     at your workplace?</h3>

     <p>I tried introducing the NetBeans Platform at work for the
     tools we are developing. Sadly, it has a rather large code base
     we're building on top of, so it is quite complicated to convince
     people it would be a smart move.

     <p>Also, Eclipse is the most widely used IDE here. People are
     rather fond of their IDE, even if they see some of the benefits
     of the NetBeans Platform.


     <div style="float: left;"><img src="nbm_interviews/emilian/quote1.png" alt="quote 2"></div>


     <p>Maybe this sounds like blasphemy but, once there is an Eclipse
     plugin for NetBeans Platform development, you've struck gold!
     Then, you'd have a clean migration path towards the
     NetBeans Platform and, from there, to NetBeans IDE. Or at least
     merge, somehow, the NetBeans module system with OSGI.

     <p><h3>What are your favorite NetBeans features?</h3>

     <p>The form editor (the Matisse GUI Builder) is getting rather
     powerful! Initially, I liked writing things by hand, since it
     felt a lot more professional, but nowadays I feel
     no shame in using the IDE to make a Swing GUI!

     <p>The wizards are also getting a lot more powerful. I only use
     them on the module development side, but they are just great. They
     allow you to focus on what's application-specific, without
     necessarily learning an entire new NetBeans API for a simple
     feature.

     <p><h3>If you could change one thing in module development
     features in NetBeans, what would it be?</h3>

     <p>Remove cookies altogether and use just Lookup! Now it looks
     to me like a hibrid state. I don't think it serves anyone.
     Backwards-compatibility sounds nice but there has to be a
     limit... or at least a bleeding-edge fork.

     <p><h3>In your experience, if I am an Eclipse user&#8212;what
     would be the main reasons for thinking about using NetBeans
     instead?</h3>

     <p>If you want to do Java EE development without shareware, edit
     an XML file without installing some plugin for the syntax
     highlighting, create a nice JFrame without writing any line of
     code&#8212;take a look at NetBeans IDE. The fact that you can
     take the ZIP release and unzip it on Linux and Windows
     and have them both work is also a plus.

     <p><h3>Any final thoughts?</h3>

     <p>As a developer, I have to say I like the NetBeans Platform for
     what it offers and because of the way I see things get done on
     <a href="https://netbeans.org">http://www.netbeans.org</a>.
     For example, the NetBeans Javadoc is extraordinary. The
     <tt>api.html</tt> pages are a killer and to have the DTD's,
     properties defined,
     UIManager keys and more in the Javadoc really gives you a global
     view of the module API. It just shows that lots of work has been
     put into this.

     <p>The specs or proposals also look way nicer and people seem to
     be doing some great work. For example, the
     <a href="http://ui.netbeans.org/docs/ui/floating_windows/floating_windows.html">floating
     windows specification</a> is excellent. Other proposals are also
     impressive, due to the professionalism involved and to the fact
     that they are discussed first on the mailing list and refined.

     <p>This kind of quality work gives me a lot of confidence about
     the IDE and Platform and also an opportunity to learn from the best.

     <p><h3>Thanks Emilian and continue having fun with NetBeans!</h3>
     <p>


     <!-- ======================================================================================== -->

     <h2><a name="nextsteps"></a>Further reading</h2>

     <p>For information about creating and developing plug-in modules and rich-client applications, see the following resources:
     <ul>

     <p><li><a href="https://platform.netbeans.org/tutorials/quickstart-nbm.html">Introduction to NetBeans Module Development</a></li>
     <p><li><a href="https://platform.netbeans.org/tutorials/nbm-paintapp.html">Introduction to Rich-Client Application Development</a></li>
     <p><li><a href="https://platform.netbeans.org/tutorials/index.html">NetBeans Modules and Rich-Client Applications Learning Trail</a></li>
     <p><li><a href="https://netbeans.org/download/dev/javadoc/">NetBeans API Javadoc (Current Development Version)</a></li>
     <p><li><a href="http://www.planetnetbeans.org">Blogs by NetBeans Engineers and NetBeans Users</a></li></ul>
     </p>

     <hr>


     </body>
 </html>
	<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
	<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
	<head>
	<!-- -- xhtml -- -->
	<title>Meet a NetBeans Module Writer: Emilian Bold</title>
	<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://netbeans.org/netbeans.css">
	<meta name="AUDIENCE" content="NBUSER">
	<meta name="TYPE" content="ARTICLE">
	<meta name="EXPIRES" content="N">
	<meta name="AUTHOR" content="Geertjan Wielenga">
	<meta name="developer" content="gwielenga@netbeans.org">
	<meta name="indexed" content="y">
	<meta name="description"
	content="">
	<!-- Copyright (c) 2005 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. -->
	<!-- Use is subject to license terms.-->
	</head>
	<body>
	<h1>Meet a NetBeans Module Writer: Emilian Bold</h1>
	<p><small><a href="mailto:nbdocs_feedback@usersguide.netbeans.org?subject=Feedback:%20Meet%20A%20NetBeans%20Module%20Writer:%20Emilian">Feedback</a></small></p>

	<table width="210" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" align="right" class="ltblue">
	<tbody>
	<tr>
	<td align="center"><img align="center" src="nbm_interviews/emilian/emilian.png" alt="Emilian's picture">

	<br><b>Emilian Bold</b></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	<td>Emilian's Hot Links:
	<ul>
	<li><a href="http://emilian-bold.blogspot.com/">EBJb: Emilian Bold Java blog</a>
	<li><a href="http://web.info.uvt.ro/~fierarul/typo3/">My Homepage</a>
	</ul>

	</tr>


	</tbody>
	</table>

	<p>Emilian Bold from Romania has been using NetBeans IDE and
	the NetBeans Platform for many years. Recently he ported a
	Swing application to the NetBeans Platform. Here, he shares
	his general experiences with NetBeans, as well as some
	pleasant discoveries made while porting his application. He
	also talks about <a href="https://netbeans.org/download/dev/javadoc/">
	NetBeans Javadoc</a> and how useful he has found it while
	using the NetBeans APIs.</p>

	<p><h3>Emilian... where in the world are you and what do you
	do there?</h3>

	<p>Hi! I live in Timisoara, Romania. (Click <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=timisoara,+romania&ie=UTF8&ll=45.756385,21.211681&spn=0.013145,0.043259&t=h&om=1">here</a>
	for directions!) I work fulltime
	as a Java programmer for Alcatel Timisoara and
	I freelance once in a while.

	<p><h3>Are you active in the Java community there?</h3>

	<p>Sadly, there is no vibrant Java community in Timisoara.
	There are lots of people programming in Java, to my knowledge,
	both Java ME and Java EE, but we don't have anything formal,
	like a Java User Group (JUG).

	<p>I've talked to some people that have been planning to start a
	JUG (more on the Java EE side) but I don't think it is wise to
	make an estimate of when that will happen right now. It will
	probably happen in the next year, with some investment from a
	startup.

	<p><h3>How did you first get acquainted with NetBeans IDE?</h3>

	<p>It's actually quite a funny story. Initially I had a really
	lousy PC and, because I had learned Java from some certification
	books I found at our university's library, I used Notepad with
	<tt>javac</tt> and after that <tt>JCreator</tt> for a
	while.

	<p>I later managed to get a "smuggled" copy of NetBeans on a CD
	from some older guys working in a small startup. It was amazing.
	I had no idea what "Bean Patterns" did but it was very nice...
	and very slow on my PC. This is how I found out about the modular
	structure of NetBeans, the fact that you can disable modules to
	free some RAM, and thus I learned about the NetBeans Platform.

	<p><h3>And what about the NetBeans Platform? How did you get
	started with that and why?</h3>

	<p>Initially the NetBeans Platform represented, to me, the core of NetBeans
	that allowed me to "disable" the other memory hungry modules...

	<p>However, since it was open-sourced, I started reading about it
	and got to the Javadoc files. Those files are the lesser known
	hidden gems in the docs! As a trainee, I started printing the
	Javadoc HTML files one by one for each API... Nodes... Actions...
	etc... For example, these ones are good:

	<p><ul>
	<li><a href="https://netbeans.org/download/dev/javadoc/org-openide-modules/org/openide/modules/doc-files/api.html">Modules API</a>
	<li><a href="https://netbeans.org/download/dev/javadoc/org-openide-modules/org/openide/modules/doc-files/api.html">Utilities API</a>
	<li><a href="https://netbeans.org/download/dev/javadoc/org-openide-nodes/org/openide/nodes/doc-files/api.html">Nodes API</a>
	<li><a href="https://netbeans.org/download/dev/javadoc/org-openide-windows/org/openide/windows/doc-files/api.html ">Window System API</a>
	</ul>

	<p>I like the idea of having everything pluggable, with
	dependecies among modules and integrated into a single tool.

	<p>My first project was a report generator on top of the
	Platform, the 3.6 release. After that, I skipped the 4.x release
	and then returned with NetBeans 5.0. There is a huge difference
	between the two. 5.0, and above, is much more friendly towards
	module developers. It took me days years ago to do and learn
	something that is automatically generated now with a simple wizard.

	<p><h3>What are some of the things you've done with the
	NetBeans Platform?</h3>

	<p>One thing I did was... port a Swing application to the
	NetBeans Platform! It is an image processing application.
	Here is a screenshot of the ported application on the
	NetBeans Platform:

	<p><img border="1" align="center" src="nbm_interviews/emilian/gimage.png" alt="gimage">

	<p><h3>What's the story behind this application?</h3>

	<p>Well, during my re-introduction to 5.0, I needed a simple project
	to play with. So I took a project I did with my
	fellow student Mihaela Gander during
	my university studies. Together, we had built an image processing
	application. Now, to reacquaint myself with the NetBeans Platform,
	I tried to port it over to the NetBeans Platform.



	<p>It's not actually finished yet, since I want to give it to my
	students to be enhanced further when school starts at the
	university in October. I'll teach a class or two there, about Java,
	and hopefully pitch the NetBeans Platform.

	<div style="float: right;"><img src="nbm_interviews/emilian/quote2.png" alt="quote 2"></div>

	<p>By the way, the fact that the
	NetBeans Platform is modular makes it excellent
	for this kind of job—each student or pair may do their
	own module and at the end you get a full application with lots
	of independent modules for different image operations.

	<p><h3>How was it to port the application to the NetBeans Platform?</h3>

	<p>Well, the porting was quite easy—I had
	a JDesktop with some
	JInternalFrames and I already had a home-made way of defining
	actions with their own place in the menu etc, which is
	a "poor man's platform", so to speak. So all I had to do was
	convert JInternalFrame to TopComponent
	and then use the NetBeans IDE wizards for the Actions.

	<p>I took the easy way with a CallableSystemAction since there
	are only two kinds of TopComponents—image or
	histogram—but I would like to replace them with proper
	CookieActions.

	<p>Other than that, since it was pure Swing, nothing had to be
	altered. I'm now using the <tt>META-INF/services</tt> to allow
	outside modules to implement new operations and then rely on
	the Lookup.

	<p>Hopefully it will become a good teaching tool—with the
	new scripting engines in JDK 6, students could make small scripts
	to test the newly learned filters, etc. The scripting part is
	not implemented yet, hopefully it will be done by October.

	<p>And the new full screen mode really comes in handy for images!

	<p><h3>Have you done anything else with the NetBeans Platform?</h3>

	<p>The current project I'm slowly working on is a mind mapping
	application, using the great <a href="http://graph.netbeans.org/">
	NetBeans Visual Library</a>. Here's what the application looks
	like right now:

	<p><img border="1" align="center" src="nbm_interviews/emilian/eMind.png" alt="emind">

	<p><h3>What is mind mapping and how does it relate to this
	application?</h3>

	<p>Mind mapping is just a simple way to present ideas by using
	links between notions or words, using different colors, icons,
	node sizes and shapes (go
	<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_mapping">here</a> for
	details).

	<p>Basically, I'm planning to heavily use the
	<a href="http://graph.netbeans.org/">NetBeans Visual Library</a>,
	but currently David Kaspar, the NetBeans engineer responsible for this
	library, is still working on it, especially
	the Javadoc side. So, I'm just going to wait a little. My code
	uses pieces from the examples, so there isn't much worthy or
	actually not that much that is mine or original. I use pieces
	from the examples while waiting for some
	docs or tutorial to learn more about how I can customize
	the display of the nodes or links, to make them look better.

	<p><h3>What do you enjoy about using the NetBeans Platform?</h3>

	<p>I enjoy the fact that everything is already
	made—menu items that enable/disable, toolbar buttons,
	modules that can be updated from the web. For me, once a
	desktop application gets an (auto)update
	feature, it's in a whole other segment.
	<div style="float: right;"><img src="nbm_interviews/emilian/quote3.png" alt="quote 3"></div>
	<p>There is so much useful code there that it would have
	taken ages to write it yourself. Of course, that also means
	learning the APIs...

	<p>By the way, I'm also a fan of dismantling
	NetBeans! Lots of good code there, with no need
	to be tied to a
	particular platform or framework. For example,
	I've extracted the Progress API to a standalone version and
	open sourced it at <a href="http://progress-api.dev.java.net">progress-api.dev.java.net</a>.
	I'm also glad someone extracted the
	Window system. Something else: <tt>org-openide-util.jar</tt>
	is also great with the Lookup in standalone applications.</p>

	<p><h3>What are some of the problems you encountered while working
	with NetBeans IDE or the NetBeans Platform?</h3>

	<p>On the IDE side, I struggled a lot initially with my weak
	PC and the fact that NetBeans was quite heavy for the RAM.
	This looks like peanuts now, with 2GB RAM on my laptop,
	but for lesser PCs, it's tough. Thinking back now, I think it
	was wise not to dumb-down the IDE just the make it faster. The
	feature list is impressive and the design
	excellent, so some CPU cycles don't matter, in retrospect.

	<p>On the NetBeans Platform side, 3.6 was quite hard to program even if
	there was a freely-downloadable book written with 3.5 in mind. Of
	course, that 3.6 made most of the examples unusable.

	<p><h3>How did you solve these problems?</h3>

	<p>Regarding NetBeans IDE, I just saved some money and bought a
	new PC...

	<p>For the NetBeans Platform, I've read many times the
	Javadoc (damn that unfortunate "cookie" word!) and then the
	book. In the end, it started making sense and I could read the
	Javadoc with some ease. But I still learn new things as I read
	the mailing list or a new tutorial.

	<p><h3>Can you share some code snippets? Maybe some tips and tricks
	of the APIs you've been working with? </h3>

	<p>Well, a little thing I've blogged about
	(<a href="http://emilian-bold.blogspot.com/2006/08/netbeans-platform-statuslineelementpro.html">here</a>)
	is how to add your own status bar component in a NetBeans Platform application with the
	help of <tt>StatusLineElementProvider</tt>. Basically, you just create the
	<tt>META-INF/services</tt> folders in the <tt>src/</tt> folder and add the
	<tt>org.openide.awt.StatusLineElementProvider</tt> file with the name of your
	implementing class.

	<p>Next, in your implementing class you just need to implement the
	<tt>StatusLineElementProvider</tt> interface and return your Component in
	<tt>getStatusLineElement()</tt>. It's easy as hell with a trick—how do you
	determine the order of the items in the statusbar? Well, you rely on the
	Lookup (described <a href="https://netbeans.org/download/dev/javadoc/org-openide-util/org/openide/util/doc-files/api.html#service-lookup">here</a>),
	via the <tt>#position</tt> enhancement.

	<p>Basically, the file will contain first your class and then a numeric position:

	<p><pre class="examplecode">com.example.program.YourClass
	#position=SomeNumber</pre>

	<p>And then the NetBeans Platform will add components to the status bar/line starting
	with the smallest number. Just keep in mind that the Progress API has
	a component with position <tt>-13</tt> so usually you would use a smaller
	(that is, negative) number.

	<p><h3>Other tips?</h3>

	<p>Well, this made me smile recently: How do you get rid of the build
	number from a NetBeans Platform application's titlebar? Normally that
	is a branding operation. So you would go to
	<tt>org-netbeans-core-windows.jar</tt> in the module suite's
	<tt>branding</tt> folder, edit the <tt>Bundle.properties</tt> file and play
	with <tt>CTL_MainWindow_Title</tt> and <tt>CTL_MainWindow_Title_No_Project</tt>.

	<p>However, I recently read about another solution—in your module installer's
	<tt>restored()</tt> method, just put something like this:

	<p><pre class="examplecode">System.setProperty("netbeans.buildnumber", "")</pre>

	<p>This works! (Unless the user disables your module...) This shows that
	sometimes there is more than one way to do the
	branding. However, the person that discovered this trick must surely have grep-ed the source code
	to discover it. Go open source!</p>

	<p><h3>Anything else?</h3>

	<p>A nice thing about the Options Dialog API is that it allows invalid
	states via the <a href="https://netbeans.org/download/dev/javadoc/org-netbeans-modules-options-api/org/netbeans/spi/options/OptionsPanelController.html#isValid()">isValid</a>
	method. This is a great way to signal to the user that something
	isn't filled correctly. And the NetBeans Platform helps, by disabling the OK button
	and providing only the Cancel. As soon as the Option panel gets into a
	stable state, and isValid() returns true, the OK button is enabled again.

	<p>If you use the Options Panel wizard, you basically have to call
	<tt>controller.changed()</tt> once the valid-status has changed, which will
	notify the listeners. Otherwise you have to fire a property change for
	<tt>PROP_VALID</tt>.</p>

	<p><h3>Have you tried to introduce the NetBeans Platform
	at your workplace?</h3>

	<p>I tried introducing the NetBeans Platform at work for the
	tools we are developing. Sadly, it has a rather large code base
	we're building on top of, so it is quite complicated to convince
	people it would be a smart move.

	<p>Also, Eclipse is the most widely used IDE here. People are
	rather fond of their IDE, even if they see some of the benefits
	of the NetBeans Platform.


	<div style="float: left;"><img src="nbm_interviews/emilian/quote1.png" alt="quote 2"></div>


	<p>Maybe this sounds like blasphemy but, once there is an Eclipse
	plugin for NetBeans Platform development, you've struck gold!
	Then, you'd have a clean migration path towards the
	NetBeans Platform and, from there, to NetBeans IDE. Or at least
	merge, somehow, the NetBeans module system with OSGI.

	<p><h3>What are your favorite NetBeans features?</h3>

	<p>The form editor (the Matisse GUI Builder) is getting rather
	powerful! Initially, I liked writing things by hand, since it
	felt a lot more professional, but nowadays I feel
	no shame in using the IDE to make a Swing GUI!

	<p>The wizards are also getting a lot more powerful. I only use
	them on the module development side, but they are just great. They
	allow you to focus on what's application-specific, without
	necessarily learning an entire new NetBeans API for a simple
	feature.

	<p><h3>If you could change one thing in module development
	features in NetBeans, what would it be?</h3>

	<p>Remove cookies altogether and use just Lookup! Now it looks
	to me like a hibrid state. I don't think it serves anyone.
	Backwards-compatibility sounds nice but there has to be a
	limit... or at least a bleeding-edge fork.

	<p><h3>In your experience, if I am an Eclipse user—what
	would be the main reasons for thinking about using NetBeans
	instead?</h3>

	<p>If you want to do Java EE development without shareware, edit
	an XML file without installing some plugin for the syntax
	highlighting, create a nice JFrame without writing any line of
	code—take a look at NetBeans IDE. The fact that you can
	take the ZIP release and unzip it on Linux and Windows
	and have them both work is also a plus.

	<p><h3>Any final thoughts?</h3>

	<p>As a developer, I have to say I like the NetBeans Platform for
	what it offers and because of the way I see things get done on
	<a href="https://netbeans.org">http://www.netbeans.org</a>.
	For example, the NetBeans Javadoc is extraordinary. The
	<tt>api.html</tt> pages are a killer and to have the DTD's,
	properties defined,
	UIManager keys and more in the Javadoc really gives you a global
	view of the module API. It just shows that lots of work has been
	put into this.

	<p>The specs or proposals also look way nicer and people seem to
	be doing some great work. For example, the
	<a href="http://ui.netbeans.org/docs/ui/floating_windows/floating_windows.html">floating
	windows specification</a> is excellent. Other proposals are also
	impressive, due to the professionalism involved and to the fact
	that they are discussed first on the mailing list and refined.

	<p>This kind of quality work gives me a lot of confidence about
	the IDE and Platform and also an opportunity to learn from the best.

	<p><h3>Thanks Emilian and continue having fun with NetBeans!</h3>
	<p>


	<!-- ======================================================================================== -->

	<h2><a name="nextsteps"></a>Further reading</h2>

	<p>For information about creating and developing plug-in modules and rich-client applications, see the following resources:
	<ul>

	<p><li><a href="https://platform.netbeans.org/tutorials/quickstart-nbm.html">Introduction to NetBeans Module Development</a></li>
	<p><li><a href="https://platform.netbeans.org/tutorials/nbm-paintapp.html">Introduction to Rich-Client Application Development</a></li>
	<p><li><a href="https://platform.netbeans.org/tutorials/index.html">NetBeans Modules and Rich-Client Applications Learning Trail</a></li>
	<p><li><a href="https://netbeans.org/download/dev/javadoc/">NetBeans API Javadoc (Current Development Version)</a></li>
	<p><li><a href="http://www.planetnetbeans.org">Blogs by NetBeans Engineers and NetBeans Users</a></li></ul>
	</p>

	<hr>


	</body>
	</html>