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Overview

Our Wiki gives you a place to share ideas and advice with other folks. We've started it off with some instructions about how to get Java applications to use Napkin for their Look and Feel.The Napkin Look & Feel is a pluggable Java look and feel that looks like it was scrawled on a napkin. You can use it to make provisional work actually look provisional, or just for fun. It is released under a BSD-style license

The idea is to try to develop a look and feel that can be used in Java applications that looks informal and provisional, yet be fully functional for development. Often when people see a GUI mock-up, or a complete GUI without full functionality, they assume that the code behind it is working. While this can be used to sleazy advantage, it can also convince people who ought to know better (like your managers) that you are already done when you have just barely begun, or when only parts are complete. No matter how much you speak to their rational side, the emotional response still says "Done!". Which after a while leads to a later question: "That was done months ago! What are they doing? Playing?" A good article on this is Joel on Software 's “ The Iceberg Secret, Revealed ”.

So the idea is to create a complete look and feel that can be used while the thing is not done which will convey an emotional message to match the rational one. As pieces of the work are done, the GUI for those pieces can be switched to use the "formal" (final) look and feel, allowing someone looking at demos over time to see the progress of the entire system reflected in the expression of the GUI.

Over time, several folks have just liked the thing and wanted to use it for non-provisional GUI's. Sometimes this is because the application itself seems to match the theme, such as a brainstorming tool. And sometimes it's just that it looks fun.

Snapshots

This is all done using the Java Swing pluggable Look & Feel framework.To give you a feel for what this looks like, here are a few screen snapshots (as thumbnails; click for full-sized images):

Development



Ken Arnold We welcome anyone to contribute — code, screenshots, thoughts, dreams, understanding, coffee, chocolate...

Alex Lam S.L.

Sightings

Acknowledgments

andcreated the sketching subsystem, as a senior project for their degrees at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. They did a great job, and solved an important problem. And thanks to, a fellow student and friend of mine who suggested they get in touch with me to look for a thesis project.

of Sun has helped me pick apart some of the more abstruse and arcane bits of the plaf framework, which is full of 'em. Thanks a bunch, Scott, and thanks to, also of Sun, for plugging me together with him.

has contributed many spare cycles (of which he has none) to planning the upgrade to 1.5, making the whole process much easier.

The font "Felt Tip Roman" was created by, who spent a lot of time with me on how to license this. He has kindly decided that this particular use does not require individual licensing for each user of the LAF, but can be done by special arrangement. The legalities are below, but beyond those legalities, we'd like to ask you all to be cool — if you like the font and want to use it, buy it properly. Making fonts is not easy, and font folks get their work ripped off far too often. If you do want to use it, buy it from his site http://www.ms-studio.com/ , where he gets more from it.

The font "Ænigma Scrawl" was created by, and has worked very well for a handwritten font that scales reasonably to GUI-control sizes (most handwritten-style fonts are display fonts that only work in large sizes). To make things work better, Brian has adapted the font to adjust the spacing around some punctuation as well as some other tweaks. So the version released here is a custom one direct from the artist (which we believe he expects to roll back into the font at future date). We would like to thank Brian a lot for his quick and nimble cooperation, which made this work a lot better and easier on me.

has been very helpful in thinking through with me (sometimes for me) some of the hairy graphics problems. This definitely pushes into some poorly documented areas of the 2D API, and it has helped a lot to have someone to talk it through with. Thanks, Miro!

created a quick and excellent selection of blueprint backgrounds for me to choose from. Thanks!

Several people have helped with testing, reporting bugs, and suggesting things. The most persistent have been:, and. Thanks to all, and we'll be happy to have you be added to this list.