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#1 2005-06-22 23:53:14

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

Now who would dare do such a thing?! wink

One day, I was playing around within a Java IDE and I accidentally wrote Jacman. Please don't hunt me down - it was an accident, honest!

But, since it's almost ready, I thought I'd prempt my public decapitation before the actual code was released.

All the details and lots of nice screenshots are available from the Jacman page.

In all seriousness, it was just a little project I thought of to practise my Java GUI skills. Those who've played with Swing will know there's one hell of a learning curve to it.  Personally, I'm happy with good ol' pacman from the command line, but hey, perhaps others will like Jacman, if only for being able to quickly browse the available packages. I hope people will agree that it looks better than your average Java application though 8)

I will probably get around to releasing next week, should anyone care.

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#2 2005-06-22 23:58:51

cactus
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From: t͈̫̹ͨa͖͕͎̱͈ͨ͆ć̥̖̝o̫̫̼s͈̭̱̞͍̃!̰
Registered: 2004-05-25
Posts: 4,622
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

wow. that is probably one of the best looking java apps I have seen in a long time.
The name is kinduv strange though. Jacman.


"Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept." -- Postel's Law
"tacos" -- Cactus' Law
"t̥͍͎̪̪͗a̴̻̩͈͚ͨc̠o̩̙͈ͫͅs͙͎̙͊ ͔͇̫̜t͎̳̀a̜̞̗ͩc̗͍͚o̲̯̿s̖̣̤̙͌ ̖̜̈ț̰̫͓ạ̪͖̳c̲͎͕̰̯̃̈o͉ͅs̪ͪ ̜̻̖̜͕" -- -̖͚̫̙̓-̺̠͇ͤ̃ ̜̪̜ͯZ͔̗̭̞ͪA̝͈̙͖̩L͉̠̺͓G̙̞̦͖O̳̗͍

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#3 2005-06-23 00:03:43

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

cactus wrote:

The name is kinduv strange though. Jacman.

A bit like my name then! I couldn't think of anything cleverer.

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#4 2005-06-23 00:41:54

celeron2002
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From: Santiago, Chile.
Registered: 2004-02-18
Posts: 150

Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

do you have a cvs repository?
it looks very nice wink


irc.bsd.cl #linux
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#5 2005-06-23 00:57:09

T-Dawg
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From: Charlotte, NC
Registered: 2005-01-29
Posts: 2,736

Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

Looks great! Nice job, arooaroo.  I look forward to your release wink

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#6 2005-06-23 00:57:18

Cam
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From: Brisbane, Aus
Registered: 2004-12-21
Posts: 658
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

How does it "talk" to pacman? Is there a nice pretty way or did you just parse the CLI output like a couple of the other GUI pacman apps around have?

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#7 2005-06-23 01:04:53

iBertus
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From: Greenville, NC
Registered: 2004-11-04
Posts: 2,228

Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

very nice, aroo! if i used pacman GUIs i'd be all over this one.

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#8 2005-06-23 01:43:26

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

celeron2002 wrote:

do you have a cvs repository?
it looks very nice wink

I don't. Perhaps I will set up a project on SourceForge and use the CVS server there. Of course, I'll make the source available as soon as its released.

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#9 2005-06-23 01:47:33

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

Cam wrote:

How does it "talk" to pacman? Is there a nice pretty way or did you just parse the CLI output like a couple of the other GUI pacman apps around have?

It's not particularly nice. It uses Java's Runtime class and calls the exec() method. I pass in the necessary command (as you would type it in a shell) and it's gets run. The tricky part was getting the output in real time. Normally, Runtime.exec() just dished out all the output at the end, once the process has completed. This lag wouldn't be very interesting for the user. Fortunately, Sudman helped me out in this thread.

HTH

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#10 2005-06-23 01:55:53

Gullible Jones
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Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

Oyf. :shock:

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#11 2005-06-23 21:10:49

sud_crow
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From: Argentina
Registered: 2003-06-30
Posts: 546
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

Real nice looking. I think you have a newbie winner there man.

By the way, it looks similar to Eclipse when starts for the very first time, meaning that its good looking.

Also:
If you could modularize (?) it in a way that you can add translated files, for internationalization, it would be a Good Thing (tm).


Leonardo Andrés Gallego
www.archlinux-es.org || Comunidad Hispana de Arch Linux

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#12 2005-06-23 21:59:02

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

sud_crow wrote:

Real nice looking. I think you have a newbie winner there man.

By the way, it looks similar to Eclipse when starts for the very first time, meaning that its good looking.

Also:
If you could modularize (?) it in a way that you can add translated files, for internationalization, it would be a Good Thing (tm).

I'm glad that so many esteemed Archers have given praise to this little project.

Regarding i18n: I'm already on to it. I'm just having to sort out those main buttons on the intro screen as their size is hard-coded which is clearly not i18n friendly.

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#13 2005-06-23 22:08:30

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

hardcoded button sizes? Do we not know what layout managers are for!? :-D

I haven't tried it, but nice work on making Arch Linux users appreciate a Java App. ;-) I may be recommending it to non-command-line-comfortable users after I test it. My dear sister is running Arch now...

Dusty

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#14 2005-06-23 22:25:41

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

I know, it ain't ideal. If you look at the screenshots, the main screen uses a custom button which are in fact JPanels painted to act like buttons. In order to get them the same width, it seemed easier to manually set their preferred size to a fixed width.

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#15 2005-06-23 23:18:14

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

curious... why JPanels painted to act like buttons? Why not buttons painted to look like custom buttons?

Dusty

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#16 2005-06-23 23:27:14

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

Dusty wrote:

curious... why JPanels painted to act like buttons? Why not buttons painted to look like custom buttons?

Dusty

Because they started life as the work of a friend. It seemed (marginally) easier at the time to layout the the icon and text on a panel, and then paint the background underneath.

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#17 2005-06-23 23:52:12

soniX
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From: Oslo, Norway
Registered: 2004-01-23
Posts: 161

Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

Oh my.... that looks great!
cant wait to see the source code for this lovely project of yours...
Your gui programming skills are excelent!.. if all java programs looked like jacman, nobody would complain about swing being ugly.
I hate coding gui, but looking at your screenshots almost makes me want to dig into those swing tutorials again.
and to answer you question regarding releasing the sourcecode "does anybody care?"... I know I do!
congrats arooaroo!

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#18 2005-06-24 01:29:27

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

The nice thing about arooaroo is he is a solid community member... maybe tihs pacman frontend will actually be maintained!

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#19 2005-06-24 02:27:13

kleptophobiac
Member
From: Sunnyvale, CA
Registered: 2004-04-25
Posts: 488

Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

/me also wants source code.

I'm guilty of being a lazy java gui programmer... I also cheat and use jigloo.

http://www.mstcforum.com/uploads/images … rol003.png

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#20 2005-06-24 08:43:31

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

GUI programming is Swing is tedious. I don't get on with the GUI builders that much. I sometimes use Netbeans to help with a difficult form when using GridBagLayout - but I basically do all my GUI work by hand.

However, I do try to reuse as many components as possible rather than reinventing the wheel. Most of the cool GUI stuff you can see are not my own invention - they are from various sources in Swing blogs and tutorials. I just brought them together to add some polish.

Aesthetics aside - I do think that this tool is actually usable too!

The source will be released as soon as it's ready.

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#21 2005-06-24 09:42:11

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

soniX wrote:

cant wait to see the source code for this lovely project of yours...

Dang! I better go and put some comments in then :oops:

soniX wrote:

Your gui programming skills are excelent!.. if all java programs looked like jacman, nobody would complain about swing being ugly.

I had written an article about this issue for OSNews recently. The default looks are nothing much to look at - but the great thing with Java is you can switch look-and-feels with a couple of lines of code and use some of the great alternatives like JGoodies looks.

If you want to see a beatiful Java app, look no further than Imagery. Drool...

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#22 2005-06-24 15:52:13

kleptophobiac
Member
From: Sunnyvale, CA
Registered: 2004-04-25
Posts: 488

Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

I've always been rather minimalist about GUI's... things like fades and fruity buttons don't really do it for me,  but I can appreciate avoiding absolute layout (which I'm addicted to).

And yes... it does remind me of eclipse. smile

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#23 2005-06-24 20:14:59

chane
Member
Registered: 2003-12-02
Posts: 93

Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

If you want a little help via a framework, I have found the jgoodies framework pretty easy to learn and use.  It's not a GUI builder, but is programming framework that has helped me create internal apps that look relatively good.

http://www.jgoodies.com/

Chris....

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#24 2005-06-26 13:32:12

kleptophobiac
Member
From: Sunnyvale, CA
Registered: 2004-04-25
Posts: 488

Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

thanks for pointing that out,  I'll definitely take a look at that.

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#25 2005-06-26 23:59:23

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
Website

Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

Thanks for your patience. I still have lots of little extras to add, but I thought I'd get 0.1 in to the wild to see what people think.

Go here to the AUR for the  PKGBUILD

Or, there's a prebuilt package (jacman-0.1-1.pkg.tar.gz) ready to be downloaded. Download, pacman -A jacman-0.1-1.pkg.tar.gz and 'jacman'.

Hope you guys enjoy it smile

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