Author Topic: Java army roster tool  (Read 6302 times)

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toby

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Java army roster tool
« on: October 01, 2007, 08:48:50 PM »
There are a fair number of Excel based army roster tools out there but I have been having a fling with trying to write a Java based application for this for a few months now. Unfortunately, what with maintaining the website and the fact that I know bugger all about Java swing development, it has sort of stalled, so I wondered if there was anyone else out there who would be interested in joining up and trying to get it flying.

The design decisions at the moment are:

Java so it can run on any machine
XML flat files to store rosters in so its easy to install.

Toby

dg

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Re: Java army roster tool
« Reply #1 on: October 02, 2007, 06:58:10 PM »
Er... dumb question but whats wrong with an Excel tool? At least until an alternaitve with advantages is available.
I think something like that from the official website would be very useful - at least to me :)

toby

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Re: Java army roster tool
« Reply #2 on: October 03, 2007, 03:11:01 PM »
There is one on the official website.

Its the spirit of innovation calling. I like applications rather than spreadsheets :)

Doug M.

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Re: Java army roster tool
« Reply #3 on: October 04, 2007, 02:52:49 AM »
Advantage 1. Not proprietary, when Excel changes to version blah blah, you don't have to change the spreadsheet.
Advantage 2. You don't need Excel to run it, so it is platform agnostic, all you need is a java capable browser
Advantage 3. XML Army data lists use an open source and standards based system

I happen to be sitting in an office with about 5 under-employed crash hot java developers, if you run into dramas, drop me a line? I can be reached at dougmelville    on my hotmail address - i am sure you can figure it out from that.

cheers

toby

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Re: Java army roster tool
« Reply #4 on: October 04, 2007, 09:57:12 AM »
I've put the alpha source code in Source Forget at http://sourceforge.net/projects/dbmmarmybuilder/ if you want to have a look. Its been a while since I have had time to play with it but at the moment I am stuck on getting things like drag and drop to work - my experience in Java client apps is pretty limited :)

You should be able to define and save and load an army list though and then use that to create an army roster. I have turned  off (commented out) the validation stuff at the moment - concentrating on the UI.

At the moment it creates a lot of little windows - not sure if that is a good idea or not - it seemed so at the time and one of the platforms I have in mind is my Nokia 9300 smart phone so that was one of the drivers behind keeping the windows small.

It should add up ME and AP, although I haven't tested army baggage yet or some of the more obscure troop types. It should be able to save and load rosters in XML as well.

Toby

Doug M.

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Re: Java army roster tool
« Reply #5 on: October 08, 2007, 03:12:39 PM »
Thanks Toby, I will try and have a look at it tomorrow.

regards

Doug

toby

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Re: Java army roster tool
« Reply #6 on: October 08, 2007, 10:37:36 PM »
I have just had a massive refactoring exercise (rather than doing any work today) and made some major changes:

It now just uses one big window, so most of the UI classes are redundant (and deprecated). I will delete them in due course :)

I have been pissing around trying to get drag and drop to work and its obviously beyond my meagre capability. You have to right click to move items from the list to the roster.

I have added basic roster printing capability.


I might even get around to putting some stuff in help to explain how it works.

Next major task is to get army baggage to add up properly.

Toby