Swing, like many current GUI systems uses a variant of MVC. It typically
pays of to use that variant, instead of trying to beat Swing into
submission to get MVC.

That's surprising, since much of what a Smalltalk-like controller is
supposed to do is handled internally by Swing.

Or maybe you are using a different definition of controller. There are
many, especially, because the Smalltalk people never bothered to
precisely define what their controller is (they just point to the
implementation in Smalltalk as the definition). Similar for MVC as such.
MVC is what is implemented in Smalltalk (of course there are different
variants in Smalltalk already ...).

There are Swing application frameworks out there. Are you sure this is
really what you want? There are also Swing "beautification" libraries
and frameworks out there. Is this what you want?

/Thomas

I suggest you check out the MVP and "Presentation Model"
patterns. Just google "Organizing Presentation Logic",
and you'll get a reference to a narrative by Martin Fowler
where he motivates MVP and Presentation Model.

I've found that a good understanding of these patterns
helps every project, where in contrast other techniques
like automatic databinding can increase or decrease your
productivity.

Once you're familiar with these patterns, you may choose
a helper library or framework that follows one of these
approaches.

I provide presentation about desktop patterns and
data binding at http://www.jgoodies.com/articles/
and a free open source helper library for working
with the Presentation Model pattern in Swing:
the JGoodies Binding. But as said in the slides,
automatic data binding is a wild horse that may
be difficult to ride on.

-Karsten