Remove the use of Weblaf from the UI #789

bevans2000 · 2023-01-04T07:18:51Z

Describe the bug
The use of Weblaf is providing problems in Java 17 and beyond, #788. The advantage of moving to Java 17 has been discussed in #437.
There is a potential workaround by changing the JVM arguments but it should be possible to run directly from the JAR file.

To Reproduce (Please provide steps)
Run the swing JAR file with no arguments on 3.4.1. The ui fails to render.

Expected and unexpected behavior
Replace the use of Weblaf classes with the vanilla Swing equivalent. This will be a change to a lot of ui files.

Specifications (please complete the following information):

Java version : Any Java17 or beyond
mars-sim build version : 3.4.1

bevans2000 · 2023-01-04T07:49:31Z

Initial build without com.alee creates 4K error 😂

Strategy will be to convert specific UI windows one at a time before dropping Weblaf from the pom.

Urwumpe · 2023-01-04T13:38:19Z

Initial build without com.alee creates 4K error 😂

Yes, that isn't unexpected, just searching the code gives out a similar large number of usages. :D

Maybe you can start by concentrating all common boilerplate code into a common "Corporate Design" class, so that the dependencies on WebLAF are first concentrated there and we can eventually refactor this place. I remember seeing quite a lot of similar code around that just adds the WebLAF style to components. We could maybe replace this by introducting a "Mars-Sim style", which fills the role of WebLAF, but allows us to quickly change the look and feel part of the simulation later.

bevans2000 · 2023-01-04T16:57:13Z

We will start from the outside and work inwards, i.e. the less integrated windows moving towards the MainWindow last.
I'm good to do it but it's a question on what is the target release but that's part of our discussion #371

bevans2000 · 2023-01-04T20:27:42Z

I've converted the Crew Editor class as a trail. Pretty straight forward. This dialog had lots of controls so it was a good test. Other windows will be easier as they are read only.
Just need to choose the target release of 3.4 or 3.5, part of #437 discussion.

Changes: - Create IconManager to hold and load the various SVG icons replace alee version Part of #789

Changes: - Person window & Tabs - TabPanel provides an getIcon method to find icons. Part of #789

bevans2000 · 2023-01-05T21:45:46Z

Thoughts on the target release for dropping weblaf and potentially moving to Java 17? I'm thinking 3.5.0.

I'm slowly dropping weblaf from the UI components.
After we need to tidy up how we handled icons. We have 2 ways of managing them based on SVG or PNG. We rely on the message bundle to define the source location but it would make more sense to have a separate "icon set" file that maps from icon id to the file name.

Urwumpe · 2023-01-05T22:36:38Z

I don't like thinking too much in releases there, if its actually maintenance work. we should put it into the next minor version for sure, by semantic versioning, but I wouldn't mind if it takes until 3.6 to be finished.

Can you make a feature request for the icon set file? I think the idea makes sense, what about just making it a Java resource file, a plain key value format should be good enough there. Also, does it make sense to support both PNG and SVG?

bevans2000 · 2023-01-05T23:35:53Z

Yes I was thinking a Java resource file that is preloaded in the Icon manager. Part of the change would be to have a single one supporting SVG & PNG. Too much effort to change the existing SVG to PNG. Also needs to support default sizing, but I've an idea about that.
Once I've done all the Unit windows I will push it to master as a work in progress commit.

Changes: - Create IconManager to hold and load the various SVG icons replace alee version Part of #789

Changes: - Person window & Tabs - TabPanel provides an getIcon method to find icons. Part of #789

Part of #789

01.06.2023 - fix: correct NPE in MapTask in MapPanel when calling map.drawMap() Initialize map instance as surf map in constructor - new: add QUARTER_RANGE, HALF_RANGE, and MAX_RANGE in Settlement - change: rework missionRange in Settlement Related to #788 (comment)

In addition convert time window and remove unused classes. Part of #789

Part of #789

MonitorWindow now selects 1st Settlement Correct empty lanel in Scientific Tool Part of #789

bevans2000 · 2023-01-09T10:59:42Z

@mokun I have been slowly converting the UI code base and have completed about 75%. What I have noticed along the way is there is a lot of Font management going on with many Font instantiations going on. Also there seems to be a mixture of Fonts with some inconsistency.
Once we remove weblaf, I feel we should do a review of the Fonts and try to use the defaults in the UIManager as much as possible. Panel titles is a particular case were we have to specify a different font style.

bevans2000 · 2023-01-10T16:00:40Z

@mokun I have been slowly converting the UI code base and have completed about 75%. What I have noticed along the way is there is a lot of Font management going on with many Font instantiations going on. Also there seems to be a mixture of Fonts with some inconsistency. Once we remove weblaf, I feel we should do a review of the Fonts and try to use the defaults in the UIManager as much as possible. Panel titles is a particular case were we have to specify a different font style.

What I want to do is drop the use of explicit Fonts altogether and use HTML styling to "adjust" rendering where needed. For example on the Panel titles we would do "Panel Title". This means that we can use any font that is specified as part of the Look And Feel without overriding it.

Urwumpe · 2023-01-10T17:55:57Z

I like the idea. Could it be implemented maybe even in a way, that we give the same kind of elements the same kind of styling throughout the UI?

bevans2000 · 2023-01-10T20:31:48Z

I like the idea. Could it be implemented maybe even in a way, that we give the same kind of elements the same kind of styling throughout the UI?

Yes I think so because there is mixture of styles. My thoughts are to push everything back to defaults and then customised only what is needed
Just realised that I didn't escape the html in my above comment but you get the idea.

Urwumpe · 2023-01-10T20:35:06Z

Just realised that I didn't escape the html in my above comment but you get the idea.

My smartphone displayed the contents first as plain UTF-8, so yeah, I understood it. :D

Part of #789

bevans2000 · 2023-01-15T16:20:55Z

@mokun Converting the Commander Tool today and it seems to have a few problems and unimplemented Tabs already. I'm not going to try and fix the issues I find.

01.14.2023 - fix: correct conversionFuel2DriveEnergy in Vehicle - fix: correct energyUsed calculation in calculateFuelUsed() in OperateVehicle - fix: correct instantaneous fuel consumption - style: use textfields in MainDetailPanel #795

mokun · 2023-01-15T19:52:26Z

it seems to have a few problems and unimplemented Tabs already

Yes. It's been a while since I updated the Commander Dashboard. I may have done once or twice just to keep it from breaking.

At first, I thought it was a great idea to implement many new and latest changes in the Dashboard's tabs in Command Mode because they are still being tested and can be "breaking".

But the Command Mode limits the player to work with one settlement only, and that we need to observe if those new changes work for all settlements or not, at some points, we decide to go directly with implementing changes in the Sandbox Mode.

That's said, we need to redefine what we want to do with Command Mode and the dashboard and the contents we want to put in all the tabs.

We have said that we come up with a tab for each division as a way of adding more interactivity to mars-sim by giving players more options to toggle in each division.

Changes: - CommanderWindow no longer uses weblaf - CommanderWindow now uses FactoryMetaTask Part of #789

mokun · 2023-01-19T22:23:42Z

Dont know but why are we using SVG fonts anyway? We are usi g way too many Fonts already.

It's scalable, you know

Urwumpe · 2023-01-19T22:48:38Z

It's scalable, you know

That applies to most vector fonts today, including OTF and TTF.

Also, it makes the UI design pretty chaotic to use too many fonts. Its like an early 1990s homepage.

bevans2000 · 2023-01-19T23:08:27Z

We should be able to use standard fonts from the UIManager I think.

mokun · 2023-01-19T23:25:02Z

Sorry. my mistake. I meant to say SVG icons, not fonts.

Urwumpe · 2023-01-20T00:01:22Z

Sorry. my mistake. I meant to say SVG icons, not fonts.

Ah, that makes way more sense now. :)

Well, we already use SVG images for the settlement map, can't we use this as starting point to create a custom button class which renders a SVG image?

mokun · 2023-01-20T01:07:52Z

Yea. We may be able to come up with that with what's shown here

Or try something like this.

In case of weblaf, it uses SVG Salamander, as explained in here.

May we can replicate what's done in weblaf using SVG Salamander since it looks like it's a more direct and faster approach.

mokun · 2023-01-20T01:19:15Z

Batik uses a lot of separate libraries and is very bloated and is something like ~8 (or 3.2 compressed) MB in size. I bet Batik also uses a lot of other dependencies.

In comparison, currently, our mars-sim binary jar stands at about ~45 MB (compressed).

Can we switch to using SVG Salamander (< 400 KB uncompressed) for displaying the image of each building as well as svg fonts ?

bevans2000 · 2023-01-20T06:44:14Z

That sounds good but let's focus on dropping weblaf first. Then as part of #791 we can consolidate how we manage icons. Control that in our own iconmanager class to allow us to be specific for vehicles, settlements etc. Then icon and image loading will be one pla e and hence easier to replace.

mokun · 2023-01-20T17:11:09Z

But we currently reply on weblaf's own icon manager for rendering svg-based icons.

So, in order to drop weblaf, we may need to figure out a replacement for reading svg icons at the same time.

bevans2000 · 2023-01-20T22:01:41Z

I've already started changing the SVG loading

Changes: - Remove Weblaf from the popupunitmenu class - Reworked PopupUnitMenu to only build items needed. - Removed basic weblaf compoennts from the ToolToolBar - Move openBrowser method to MainWidnow to provide resuse Part of #789

Changes: - Create a new SwingHelper class to hold comman reused logic - MarsCalendar popup & toolbar button changed to use a JDialog create byt SwingHelper - SwingHelper refactor the popup logic in PopUpUnitMenu to supprot any floating popup window. - OpenBrowser method moved from MainWindow to the SwingHelper class - Remove some unused classes Part of #789

Changes: - Remove weblaf from NavigationWindow - Use ActionCommand for options menu in NavigationWindow - Remove weblaf from SettlementTransparentPanel - Rework image icons in SettlementTransparentPanel Part of #789

The weblaf UIManager is interferring with the standard JToolbar by adding an extra Margin & different layout. This means the new toolbar is slightly heighter than the old one but will revisit it once weblaf is totally removed. Changes: - ToolToolBar is using the basic JToolbar class now - ToolToolBar uses a single action listener emthod and the ActionCommand pattern to execute the correct action. - Toolbar now control s the various date labels. - Date fields are now basic JLabels and not text fields. - Remvoed all the displaying of date/time logic from MainWindow Part of #789

bevans2000 · 2023-02-01T09:51:38Z

@mokun I worked on this last night and the only bit of WebLaf left is the pause overlay in the MainWindow. I don't know how to replace this at the moment; I think a JLayer could be used but not sure.
So the question is could we drop the Pause Overlay in the short term to progress to continue with the upgrade to Java 17?
I will commit my changes tonight.

mokun · 2023-02-01T14:11:35Z

could we drop the Pause Overlay in the short term to progress to continue with the upgrade to Java 17?

Yes we may as well drop it. We'll find another way to pause

bevans2000 · 2023-02-01T15:01:35Z

could we drop the Pause Overlay in the short term to progress to continue with the upgrade to Java 17?

Yes we may as well drop it. We'll find another way to pause

Ok. To be clear, the pause logic is working, I've replaced the WebSwitch class. The pause overlay I haven't managed to migrate yet, I think the answer is to use a JLayer but I don't understand

mokun · 2023-02-01T18:16:49Z

I've replaced the WebSwitch class.

So what do you replace with ?

mokun · 2023-02-01T18:18:07Z

Shall we look for a more lightweight LAF library that's Java 17 compatible and provide more decent UI elements than what Swing provides ?

Remove the weblaf components from the MainWindow status bar. Changes: - Create a new JMemoryMeter component based on JProgressBar - Replace Webmemorybar with the new JMemoryMeter component - Replace WebSwitch with a JToggleButton for the pause button - PauseButton uses a ItemListner to flip the image when it is activated - OverlayCheckBox is enabled all times to accomodate the new pause logic - Displaying of the overlay is covered by a new method displayOverlay - Remove use of weblaf IconManager from MSPIconManager - Remove unused static finals and methods Part of #789

bevans2000 · 2023-02-01T19:35:55Z

I've replaced the WebSwitch class.

So what do you replace with ?

Just pushed a commit

bevans2000 · 2023-02-01T19:45:52Z

Shall we look for a more lightweight LAF library that's Java 17 compatible and provide more decent UI elements than what Swing provides ?

I don't mind but the question is do we need anything beyond basic Swing? You wanted to look at doing a different UI client but I see JavaFX is no longer supported within the JavaSE.

bevans2000 · 2023-02-01T21:32:17Z

I've just done the least part to remove the weblaf including the look and feel raking it back to vanilla Swing. It works but look rough, also it highlights where they is specific customization in the code. It looks like we have some extra styling on the monitor tables. I think we should carry on with this approach and get back to basic Swing. Then use a look and feel class like FlatLAF. https://www.formdev.com/flatlaf/

Flatlaf can help us with fonts as well, https://www.formdev.com/flatlaf/typography/#set_font.
We can use the consolidate our use of Fonts by using styles in the UIManager instead of explicitly creating them

mokun · 2023-02-01T23:41:07Z

And we may use Radiance for theming, adding better image, font and text rendering.

It also supports SVG Transcoder.

It supports Java 17.

bevans2000 · 2023-02-02T07:09:35Z

Ok, do we want to start using custom components again? But I think the idea of theming is the right direction. We need to strip out all the custom Font and Color assignments and rely on the UIManager stylingmaybe leave SettlementMapPanel alone.
We need to pick a style for heading/title labels

bevans2000 · 2023-02-02T19:36:06Z

Yeah, it's finished. 🥳
The only causality has been the blocking pause overlay in the main window. This has been removed as it proved difficult to convert the WebOverlay class. We need to decide on a new strategy for presenting the paused state to the user.
Follow-up activity is to clean up the use of Fonts & Colors and fall back to the styling from the UIManager and hence the look and feel class. #801

mokun · 2023-02-04T05:18:35Z

We actually have been using one of the Radiance's component called Trident for animation.

		<!-- trident animation library is required by steelseries.extras in mars-sim-ui
		     https://search.maven.org/artifact/org.pushing-pixels/radiance-trident
		     https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.pushing-pixels/radiance-trident/1.0.2 : 78KB
		     https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/blob/master/docs/trident/trident.md 79KB -->
		<!-- Note: steelseries requires 1.0.2. 2.0.1 does NOT work.  -->
		<dependency>
		  <groupId>org.pushing-pixels</groupId>
		  <artifactId>radiance-trident</artifactId>
		  <version>4.5.0</version>
		</dependency>

The steelseries gauges requires it internally, I think. We used to use the source code of the steelseries. Now we have already switched to its maven artifact.

We may or may not need Trident explicitly anymore.

Shall we start using Radiance ?

bevans2000 added improvement deprecated to show whee deprecated errors come from or APIS labels Jan 4, 2023

bevans2000 self-assigned this Jan 4, 2023

bevans2000 added a commit that referenced this issue Jan 4, 2023

Remove weblaf from teh Scneario Config Editor

7069553

Changes: - Create IconManager to hold and load the various SVG icons replace alee version Part of #789

bevans2000 added a commit that referenced this issue Jan 5, 2023

Remove weblaf from the Person Unit Window

aa88ca2

Changes: - Person window & Tabs - TabPanel provides an getIcon method to find icons. Part of #789

bevans2000 added a commit that referenced this issue Jan 6, 2023

Remove weblaf from teh Scneario Config Editor

2ac2cfc

Changes: - Create IconManager to hold and load the various SVG icons replace alee version Part of #789

bevans2000 added a commit that referenced this issue Jan 6, 2023

Remove weblaf from the Person Unit Window

7fbc96b

Changes: - Person window & Tabs - TabPanel provides an getIcon method to find icons. Part of #789

bevans2000 mentioned this issue Jan 6, 2023

Define UI icons in a dedicated IconSet file #791

Closed

bevans2000 added a commit that referenced this issue Jan 6, 2023

Remove weblaf from Vehicle & Building Unit Window

d053e7b

Part of #789

bevans2000 added a commit that referenced this issue Jan 8, 2023

Remove weblaf from settlement tool window

162c52b

In addition convert time window and remove unused classes. Part of #789

bevans2000 added a commit that referenced this issue Jan 8, 2023

Remove weblaf from some tools

8d40270

Part of #789

bevans2000 added a commit that referenced this issue Jan 8, 2023

Remove unused files from UI module

744ffcb

MonitorWindow now selects 1st Settlement Correct empty lanel in Scientific Tool Part of #789

bevans2000 added a commit that referenced this issue Jan 15, 2023

Remove weblaf from the Mission UI screens

b5b971a

Part of #789

bevans2000 added a commit that referenced this issue Jan 15, 2023

Remove weblaf from CommanderWindow

540334c

Changes: - CommanderWindow no longer uses weblaf - CommanderWindow now uses FactoryMetaTask Part of #789

bevans2000 closed this as completed in ee90b27 Feb 2, 2023

bevans2000 mentioned this issue Feb 8, 2023

Unknown issue with com.alee.utils or SearchWindow #368

Closed

bevans2000 mentioned this issue Mar 16, 2023

Upgrade to Java 17 #820

Closed

Remove the use of Weblaf from the UI #789

Remove the use of Weblaf from the UI #789

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