NetBeans: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 25. Better Score Support in the Explorer

Until now, the score data node has shown the existence of a score, and its icon has displayed some miscellaneous bits of information such as parse and compilation status, but we have not really used the Explorer for what it is designed to do: display structure.

While it is fine to provide Swing-based GUI views of structural data, for many purposes some display of data in the Explorer tree and property sheet is an appropriate UI (as well as a textual view where applicable, of course). Additionally, Explorer nodes and properties tend to be more uniformly scriptable in a GUI-less environment, usable with only a keyboard and no mouse, and generally more amenable to alternate forms of presentation. Using the NetBeans scripting module you can access the Explorer via the Telnet protocol, and HTTP access through a web browser is easy, too! Exposure of functionality through nodes opens up user interaction modes you are not even aware of yet and helps to shape your thinking about what a module can do. So it is a good idea to provide full access to your module’s capabilities through this medium.

In this chapter we will extend the score UI to include full manipulation of notes from the Explorer. To get warmed up, we will show how to add a property to the data node displaying information about the compiled audio file.

The Clip Length Property

In Chapter 24 we added an Executor property to the score node to permit the audio player to be configured ...