Hello,

Find below of a list of software updates, notes about major
changes in the JGoodies libs and apps, and the current roadmap.


UPDATES
The following software updates have been published:
o Binding 2.0.2, 2.0.3, 2.0.5
o Forms 1.2.1
o Looks 2.2.0
o UIF 1.9.1
o UIF Extras 1.9.1
o Validation 2.0.1
o Swing Suite 1.9.1 RC


IMPORTANT NOTE: To avoid duplicate and incompatible library
versions in your classpath, I strongly recommend to remove
library jars from the Java extension directory (<jre-home>/lib/ext).
See also https://looks.dev.java.net/faq.html#3.3


LIBRARY CHANGES
The most relevant change is in the Forms 1.2.x. It supports
a simpler syntax, layout variables, and prototype sizes.
However, it is layout compatible with previous versions,
so you can replace older library versions and get the same
layout. See the Forms 1.2 RELEASE-NOTES for details.

The Binding and Validation have seen minor improvements and
ship with slightly updated tutorial sources.

The UIF contains bug fixes and allows to avoid a memory leak
when using the JSR 296-like Action management, see method
Applicaton#clearActionMap. Also, new convenience code has been
added to the Application class.

The Looks 2.2.0 allow to tweak the automatic text selection
feature for text fields.


SWING SUITE CHANGES
The Swing Suite 1.9.1 is a maintenance release and shall be
compatible with the 1.9.0 version.

All example applications have been updated to use the new
Forms 1.2.x features, primarily the new syntax for bounded
sizes (e.g. "[75dlu, pref], $lcgap, pref, $rgap, pref") and
predefined layout variables. Also, many mnemonics have been
added to the editors, and menus and accelerators are more
consistent.

It seems that the 1.9.1 release candidate is production ready;
it contains no known problems. Most likely, I'll rename it
to 1.9.1 and release it later in August.


MIGRATION
You can just replace the 1.9.0 library versions by the
versions contained in the 1.9.1 build. However, the example
applications use new features such as the UIF's PanelBuilder2.
The above notes will be merged into the Swing Suite release notes.


DOWNLOADS
The Swing Suite 1.9.1 RC is available from the JGoodies
product download page; access is password protected
http://www.jgoodies.com/downloads/products.html


ROADMAP
Next planned updates are the Forms 1.3 (based on Java 1.4),
Looks 2.3, and later the Swing Suite 2.0.

During the past year I've been working on new and exciting
JGoodies libraries that I keep under the hood until the APIs,
implementations, and docs are stable enough that I can manage
to ship them to a wider audience. The new libraries are in the
"JGoodies Smart Client" that you can see on the product download
page. I currently ship it only to a limited number of consulting
clients. The Swing Suite and the Smart Client shall be merged
next year. Therefore I plan to extract the JSR 296 implementation
from the UIF and move it to a separate library, as is already
the case in the Smart Client's UIF2. I'll provide more information
about this topic here in the announcement mailing list.


MISC
I've added a new presentation to the JGoodies articles page,
"Efficient Swing Design" that is about getting consistent
Swing design at affordable costs. It contains a whole bunch
of screenshots that show three meta designs: for read-only views,
two-column editors, and decent task/message/question dialogs.
See http://www.jgoodies.com/articles/


Best regards,
Karsten Lentzsch