[Ldsoss] Non-Web Application Frameworks

[Mitch Butler]

I'm a low-level OS-type guy with a reasonable amount of Java knowledge. However, I'm a beginner at things like GUIs and Swing. I have an idea for a Java Application that I would like to develop. It will a standalone program that runs on a single machine and must have a reasonably good GUI. 
   
  I've been teaching myself Swing, and all that stuff is very cool. But I find myself having to write too much stuff from scratch that I know has been done before. Plus my framework stuff doesn't look very nice! I need an Application Framework to hang my code on.
   
  I stayed up late last night (too late according to my wife!) searching the Web, and I found a few candidates: Aloe, JSR 296, JGoodies, Eclipse, XUI. There are also a whole host of other frameworks (too many!) that are targeted more at Web-type applications (AJAX, JLense, Radicore, etc.). I don't think I'm ready for those yet. But then I don't know, as I will want to learn Web App development eventually.
   
  Anyway, does anyone have experience with those that I mentioned or others that I don't know about yet? I want to be able to quickly and easily prototype my ideas. I'm looking for something that helps me with the following kinds of things:
   
  - Error/Exception handling
  - Logging (of events and special conditions)
  - Menus, buttons, controls
  - Window management (changing fonts and styles)
  - Look and Feel management (I want to try different L&Fs to see what I like)
  - Tables of data, sortable in different ways, and editable
  - Printing facilities for reports
  - Multi-threading (kicking off a background task, and updating the GUI with progress)
  - Copy/Paste
  - Message boxes
  - File access
  - Properties
   
  The one thing I don't need is a database. My data is reasonably small, so I plan to just serialize the objects into a file and reload them into memory whenever the App starts up. That is actually the kind of code that I am pretty good at. It is the GUI stuff that gives me fits.
   
  I'm using Eclipse as my IDE, and I especially like the idea of actually using Eclipse as the framework itself (RCP). But that sounds like a huge learning curve and perhaps overkill, and I want to have something working soon in my spare time.
   
  Anyway, I suppose if I spent several weeks with each of the above technologies, I could eventually figure out which one meets my needs best. But I don't want to do that right now (lazy me!). So, I'm looking for advice from those who have more experience in this area.
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