Interesting. But what do you do in that case?
Generate it all on the fly?
That is what the code i started with was doing,
using null layout and generating gui elements on the fly.
But it was just a hack, as even within windows, different
compilers and versions would produce totally different
results and that addNotify() trick, used to get the insets
on a frame object, before it was shown, which is impossible,
was just a dirty trick, not supported by Sun explicitly.
But if you have a complex enough layout,
such as you can create with grid bag, how do you design
your gui graphically?

True. Actually, what i found out is that the call to
setLayout was done too late. When i moved it to
the very beginning of frame initialization code,
it all seems to work. Not tested it on other compilers yet.
I don't quite understand all the intricacies of it,
as this is not the main thing by any means.
There is so much real stuff to take care of,
that gui, even though i take a very careful and cautious
approach in designing, is not the main thing in my case.

I like that.
Where can i see it? Do you have a reference on it
by any chance?

Good. Seems to be the best compromise between
both words.
I kinda like borland layout designer, works fine for me
even for grid bag layout, but i wouln't want to be tied
up to code it generates, even though it generates
a perfectly valid code for events, Constraints, etc.
One thing it does is to to use J... components,
and ms vj 2003 version does not support javax classes.
Btw, do you, by any chance, know if i can add javax
libraries to it? I could not figure out where their classes
are. There are not configuration parameters i see,
and i don't even know how to find it. All this "proprietary"
stuff is simply sickening. It drains so much energy
and wastes so much stuff on worrying about not getting
trapped into spider nets they forever weave, it is hard
to believe.

Anyway...

Oh... You got me excited. Thanks.
I am looking at XML stuff and wrote some code
to convert the usenet articles into nice looking HTML
pages or generate an XML code, but i haven't done
much with XML so far, even though it seems to be
something worth considering. These standard
newsreaders seem to be a stone age in terms of gui.

Where can i see this stuff and how big it is to download?
Can you tell me?

Unfortunately, i do not like to get tied up into any
software manufacturer's proprietary approach and i am
not looking at netbeans at the moment. Don't even know
what it is. It is just strictly java stand alone approach.
Not even meant to be run in any kind of browser or
whatever those "beans" may want.

I like the code to work on just about any operating system
and with just about any compiler out there, going back
to year 2000 and i am crosschecking my code constantly
on different compilers and versions to make sure i don't get
trapped into their proprietary designs and architectures.
Thats the way i like it. Take it as an attitude :---}

I have no need to use the javax, which i consider to be
a booboo on the first place.
How can you call something extension, if it has exactly the
same components as the stanard AWT, only slightly improved upon?
You just fix the bugs and add more functionality to AWT libraries
instead of creating extensions that are not extensions on the
first place. And now, with all this arm wresting between
the ms and sun, on some versions of compilers, javax is
supported, such as msjv++ 6, and on 2003 version, they are
abscent altogether. I am not even sure what is the latest version
of ms java and what does it include and what not.
When you look at borland compiler, so far, i haven't seen
a notion of stand alone executable, which means...

which means that you are going to force your user
to download gigabytes of stuff from sun or borland
before they can even run your program. This stuff is
simply sickening. Sun is also doing its number on screwing
things up and making it as "proprietary" as impossible.
So...
You are kinda walking on a mine field with all their
"business strategies" of sucking people into their own traps.
I am simply sick of it all. Looks like, 70% of time you spend not
on designing and coding, but on worrying what kind of trap
you may fall into.

This whole jvm stuff is simply insane, thanks to sun.
They want it to look like that all the roads to heaven lie
thru their proprietary trips and, instead of simply making
a stand alone executable, just like any program out there,
you have to worry about virtual machines and all that jazz,
no mortal user would even be interested in hearing about.

I am running under windows primarily, there is too much
stuff i have working under it, so i am tied up to it.
Would love to switch to linux, well,kinda, but some code
i wrote i device drivers and the linux and window worlds
are universes appart. Secondly, i am happy with windows
GUI overall. The last time i looked at linux and all that
X-stuff, it was kinda stone age level, cludge as it gets.
Looks kinda ok, but only on the first look.
But i haven't looked at it lately.

Anyway, thanks for your feedback.

Well, unfortunately, the original code is gone, but what i did,
is to move setLayout() from after call to  this.setResizable(false);
to the very top of init routine. Here is what i have now, and it
seems to be ok. Hopefully that was the problem.

 private void jbInit() throws Exception {

   this.setLayout(gridBagLayout_Frame);

   this.setForeground(new Color(255, 255, 144));
   this.setBackground(new Color(39, 20, 158));
   this.setSize(new Dimension(400, 259));
   this.setTitle("  Set Files");
   this.setResizable(false);

// Old place of setLayout(
//     this.setLayout(gridBagLayout_Frame);

   this.addComponentListener(new java.awt.event.ComponentAdapter() {
     public void componentResized(ComponentEvent e) {
       this_componentResized(e);
     }
   });
   this.addWindowListener(new java.awt.event.WindowAdapter() {
     public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e) {
       this_windowClosing(e);
     }
   });
//    panel1.setBackground(new Color(210, 255, 255));
   MainPanel.setFont(new java.awt.Font("Dialog", 1, 12));
   MainPanel.setLayout(gridBagLayout_MainPanel);

   ArchiveLabel.setText("Archive");
   AttachmentLabel.setText("Attachment");
   RulesFileLabel.setText("Dictionary");
   QuotesLabel.setText("Quotes");
   AssociationsLabel.setText("Associations");
   IntroLabel.setText("Intro");
   ReminderLabel.setText("Reminder");

/*
* the rest of frame init code
  ..................................
*/
}

Can anyone explain to me how nested gridbag layout works?
I have a frame with several buttons, checkboxes, text area,
and text fields. They all want to be layed out in their own
way.

I used a gridbag layout for the frame itself and created
panels for 3 different areas of the frame to manage different
kinds of items also using their own gridbags.

Buttons want to be layed out horizontally,
so I put them in their own panel with gridbag layout.

Text area and text fields want to be layed out vertically,
so I put them in their own panel, also gridbag layout.

Checkboxes want to be layed out at an equal distance
from each other horizontally, but there are more of them
that fit the frame horizontally, so there are a couple of
rows for those. Also put them in a gridbag layout.

Yes, I know it is an overkill to use gridbag layout
for all those categories, but i just don't know of
a better way of doing it.

To make the story short, this whole thing behaves
like crazy. In some cases buttons dissapear,
in other cases, text fields and textarea are of
a miniscule size and so on despite the fact that
fills are used to make sure they stretch full frame
size horizontally.

Questions:

1. What would be the right way of approaching this
frame's layout?

Would it be to use different kinds of layouts for each
panel, or is it reasonable to use a gridbag for all
of them?

2. What is a critical thing in gridbag in terms of
things simply dissapearing in run time, such as what
I am seeing with buttons and text fields and their
sizes?

3. Why do my text fields and text areas become
of miniscule size even though i have fill set
to .4 or so? How come they can possibly become smaller
than the font size in terms of Y size?

4. When i set constraints for each panel, using the
approximate relationships to the frame size in Y
dimension, such as .2, does it mean that my panel
will take 20 percent of Y size of the frame?

5. If that panel has buttons or text fields, how do i
set Y constraints on those fields? Are they expressed
in terms of their part of their panel, or is their
Y weight calculated using the frame's gridbag
constraints?

6. Is there any humanly readable reference on
gridbag layout or layout as such?

Thanks.

- Collapsing components with no min. size set.
- Focus and keyboard navigation.

I talk better in code, here is a (very) simple nested layout
that puts a GridLayout for the buttons in the NORTH
of a BorderLayout.
<http://www.physci.org/codes/layout/JThermostatLayoutFrame.java>
It could probably do with some padding in the
layout constructors, and maybe and EpmtyBorder
around the lot, but it shows the concept of putting
one layout, inside an area of another.

I think you will find that is the most
stable and robust course of action.

Andrew T.