Is Apache Pivot a suitable alternative to Swing?

Question

I've been taking a look at Apache Pivot and I'm wondering whether it is ready to be used as a Swing replacement (given that Swing and SwingX development goes ever so slow -- almost dormant).

Has anyone tried it out? Do you know about any drag-and-drop GUI designer for RAD with Apache Pivot?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Apache Pivot is not a good tool to create GUIs. I've tried it and I've spent several hours persisting in it's potential that is said, however, finally I built the interface from scratch without any tools.

I would like to suggest WindowBuilder. I sucessfuly worked with it, in another, huge, desktop software. Sure this is my opinion, but I have some experience in building GUIs, specially in Swing. Just to be clear, I am not affiliated with the software, and this is not an advertisment, this tool simply works!

Answer 2

It's possible to create a good desktop GUI with Apache Pivot. Of course, I'm coming to Pivot almost a year after Lincoln Pompermaier, so I'm sure Pivot has improved.

Apache Pivot needs a good tutorial so that people will understand how to use it. Since Pivot is open source, I might just write that tutorial myself.

I've never used a GUI builder. I wrote all of my Swing GUIs by hand, and I'll probably write all of my Pivot GUIs by hand.