It’s Open!

Mapton is now capable of opening files, sort of.

You can drop files directly on the map or go through the meny item Open, which brings up a regular file dialog.

After that, the File opener dialog will be displayed. Here one can select what do do with the files and set their coordinate systems.

It’s up to the plugins to provide the actual functionality on how to read the files in question and what to do with it. Such plugin item is called a CoordinateFileOpener.

So far there is the Files plugin that supports kml/kmz files to some extent and a CoordinateFileOpener for geotagged images is planned.

The File opener dialog

Distributing NetBeans Platform with JavaFX really do work

It was really easy in the past when one could just distribute the application and then relying on the “world wide” JRE to take care of the rest. That is not the case after Java 8.

For the last 7 months or so I have been working on moving Mapton from Java 8 to Java 11 and beyond.

I’ve tried many setups back and forth:

  • using the Platform JavaFX modules,
  • using jars,
  • using the AzulFX and LibericaFX JRE’s,
  • among other things. 

I ended up with the following workflow:

  1. Run NetBeans on a JDK with bundled JavaFX modules
  2. Just use JavaFX classes, without using any fx dependencies, exclude if necessary
  3. Use jlink to create a custom, one for each OS, JRE based off AdoptOpenJDK and the latest JavaFX jmods from Gluon

…and the thing is, creating a custom JRE was the general advice all along.

I guess it’s just to roll with the changes. 🙂

Development update

The next major version of Mapton is making good progress since a couple of weeks. The primary goal was the move from Java 8 to Java 11 and beyond, at the same time, a decision was made to replace the really great NetBeans Platform WindowSystem with WorkbenchFX in order to get a pure JavaFX experience.

As a bonus, the UI got declutterefied, so we don’t show more information than needed for a task.

With the move to WorkbenchFX, many dialogs are now overlays.

There are a couple of design issues to resolve in order to get a nice ‘toolbox’ environment so don’t expect a release this year, but don’t be surprised if there is… 🙂

Enjoy the screenshots below!