I mentioned to some of you that I have an intern working with me this summer who will be using TornadoFX for a Scientific Visualization. We haven't set the specific requirements, but it will involve a graphical desktop app. (Our tentative domain is a chemical reaction.) The work is hosted in this GitHub repo if you'd like to follow along. https://github.com/bekwam/k4stem We're going over language fundamentals to start so I have a few files in a Maven project that are going to be a running commentary of different syntax. I expect to get to TornadoFX and the desktop UI in a few weeks. For the next two weeks, we're going to pick some algorithms and functions to implement. They'll be math oriented and basic in Kotlin terms like parsing through an algebraic expression.

@carlw I think this is a very interesting project. I’m going into senior year of my undergrad, studying Data Science at the University of Rochester. I’d like to help in any way I can.

Cool! Have you chatted with @thomasnield yet? He’s not only a tornadofx contributor but also an author in data science

@carlw I'm doing sciency stuff too with TornadoFX. Managing Mass spectrometry, NMR and chromatography data.

@John There is also a #datascience channel on this slack if you are not already on it.

@carlw I haven't yet, I just joined the Kotlin slack the other day, and the project I'm working on is the first Kotlin project I've undertaken. @bjonnh Thanks for letting me know about the channel, I'll definitely join it

I'll start the release process for 1.7.16 🙂 I'll also update the JDK9 compatibility statement and detail the upgrade plan/path.

Done 🙂

Is there any way write this

-fx-prop-a: -fx-prop-b;

using the CSS DSL?

I've tried writing it like this:

myCssRule {
    textFill = baseColor
}

But I get

kotlin.TypeCastException: null cannot be cast to non-null type javafx.scene.paint.Color

Sadly, such an expression is (by it's very definition) not type safe, so you have to force it:

unsafe("-fx-text-fill", raw("-fx-base-color"))

You could make it a little nicer if you have custom properties defined:

// Assuming you have these defined:
val fill by cssproperty<Paint>("-fx-text-fill")
val base by cssproperty<Paint>("-fx-base")
// You can use:
fill force base

Perfect, thank you

Is there a straightforward way to use a builder to dynamically populate a tilepane with a list of items in an observable, each of which has a property to describe a simple SVG shape? Still new to TornadoFX and have only grasped basic concepts, so just curious if binding in this scenario is appropriate or whether I need to manually build up nodes.

This was my bumbling attempt at a test using just a Label:

class LibraryView: View("Library View"){

    val model:LibrariesViewModel by inject()

  override val root = anchorpane {
        tilepane {
            model.currentLibraryProperty.libraryItems.forEach {
                vbox {
                    label(it.name) 
                    alignment = Pos.TOP_LEFT
                }
            }
            ...

@danielmcq are you able to steer your requirements into one of the collection views like listview or tableview? for example, a vbox of labels might be more easily rendered as a listview. i know that's just a sample en route to the SVG, but if you can do this you can bind an observable to the control and specify different cellFormat/rendering methods rather than packing and unpacking data structures using for loops

@carlw thanks for the input. My goal is to have this grid of shapes in a resizable panel with a drag bar, so the grid of shapes should automatically reflow as the bar id dragged and the panel resizes. Could tableview handle that? I also plan to create a component responsible for showing the SVG shape, which may include other elements like label, rollover popup, etc. I'm hoping tableview would allow such a component to serve as an item renderer for each cell. Looking into it...

@danielmcq i'm suggesting something like this if you don't need a completely custom scene subgraph (ex, vbox-> label is a requirement)

@carlw uploaded a file: DataDriven SVG Shapes

This approach has the benefit over forEach() that it's dynamic. You can update the list of svgpaths without having to unpack them into the contains + controls (vbox -> label)

@carlw Ok, cool. I don't know enough about listview ... is it possible to set

cellFormat

an item renderer for each cell if you want to make a more complex component that contains, e.g. an svg path and a label and maybe some logic that handles drag/drop, etc.? If you don't know off the top of your head, no worries, I'm going to dig into this approach today (thanks to your suggestion)

path + label + rollovers are easily handled. the resizing and drag and drop I'm less sure about particularly the flowing if you have in mind web layouts that will wrap long rows as the width changes instead of scrolling

@carlw I see. I'll give that a shot and see how far I get. Here's an example of what I mean https://ibb.co/hZ7zvd ... trying to replicate this as I port my app to Kotlin/TornadoFX.

@danielmcq i did some auto layout in an ios app. flowpane seems like it might be the best fit for the resizing requirement. listview and tableview are probably too static.

Ok cool. I'll give that a spin. Thanks.

Something like this for the resize

@carlw uploaded a file: FlowPane Example

Aha! Yes, that's perfect. Thanks. Wondering what's the best class to subclass in TornadoFX for a specialized component for something like this (item renderer in a flowpane). I'm going to layer drag and drop logic on top of it once it's rendering correctly. I'm going to start with

ListCellFragment

but perhaps that's too heavyweight for this.

looks like LineChart is really awfully slow, it takes several seconds just to draw a linechart…

giving a try to: https://github.com/jasrodis/javafx-dataviewer-wrapper