Springs is another way of designing user interface, to make it easier than using the standard layout in Gtk+ (boxes, tables) but still avoid absolute positioning. The Java IDE Netbeans has a new ui builder called Matisse which has implemented a couple of these features.

GTK+ prototype implementation:

Mailinglist discussion: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2005-August/msg00081.html

• README: http://people.redhat.com/mclasen/README.springs
• Sources: http://people.redhat.com/mclasen/springs.tar.gz

The Matisse team tried to build Matisse on SpringLayout but they found it not adapted and limited so they created GroupLayout?. So we maybe have to think about a GTK+ group layout implementation.

GroupLayout? in Matisse:

• http://www.netbeans.org/kb/articles/matisse.html
• http://www.netbeans.org/files/documents/4/475/matisse.html
• http://weblogs.java.net/blog/tpavek/archive/2006/02/getting_to_know_1.html
• http://weblogs.java.net/blog/tpavek/archive/2006/03/getting_to_know.html
• http://download.java.net/jdk6/docs/api/javax/swing/GroupLayout.html