Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Philip S Milne

Terry K Kellerman

A method for managing the construction or creation of a user interface in a Java&trade; environment is described. Values for a set of internal client properties are derived and attach to a new component. A component is brought into a container, or user interface area, from a component palette. Using the client properties, size values and position values are calculated for the component, all of which are integer values. This feature simplifies the calculation process. If there are existing components in the user interface, values for the other components are recalculated using the same set of client properties (with different values) and the same set of size and position formulas. This way any resizing and repositioning of components are done automatically. Once the client properties are derived, they are stored with the component. A user interface having multiple components can then be reconstructed from state data in the components.

Graphical user interface layout manager

A method and system for incrementally serializing an object graph to a persistent form. An object graph is a set of nested objects, each with one or more properties. An object graph in a first environment is serialized to a temporary serialized form. At substantially the same time, the temporary serialized form is read into a second environment and deserialized in the second environment. By deserializing instantiation statements taken from the temporary form, a copy of the object graph is created in the second environment, wherein the objects have default values. For each object, only statements in the temporary serialized form that would alter the second environment are maintained in a final serialized form. The properties of classes are accessed through public APIs to avoid reliance on private implementations of classes. Therefore, serialized forms will typically still be deserializable even when private implementations are different across different platforms or across the same platform over time. Incremental serialization also includes error recovery and mechanisms to handle several special cases.

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San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Philip S Milne