Preferences

The preferences dialog sums up some basic settings.
  Setting the base project directory
  Look and Feel settings
  Code generation settings
  Compiler settings
  Setting preferred colors
  Setting the number of undo steps

Setting the base project directory     Top of page

To integrate RADi into your work flow, select the same directory your IDE uses to store projects.


Look and Feel settings     Top of page

These settings apply to both the RADi GUI and to exported classes.
You can choose between all installed look and feels, either from the Java core classes or from JAR files in your JRE's lib/ext directory.
Use System Look and Feel: On each platform use the platform's native look and feel (defined by UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName()).
JFrame.defaultLookAndFeelDecorated: If selected, JFrames will have the LookAndFeel's window decoration instead of the platform's window decoration. Not all LookAndFeels support this feature.
Note: For this setting to take effect you need to quit and restart RADi.
JDialog.defaultLookAndFeelDecorated: If selected, JDialogs will have the LookAndFeel's window decoration instead of the platform's window decoration. Not all LookAndFeels support this feature.
Set in exported main() method: The code for setting the defined LookAndFeel will appear inside the main() method of exported source files (with applets it goes to the init() method). Note: Once a class has been exported (containing main() or init()), changing this option has no effect.
Remember setting: Select this option if you want RADi to set the defined LookAndFeel at next startup, else settings affect the current session only.

Note: With some LookAndFeels you may notice, that the RADi GUI is not perfectly updated after you applied the look and feel. If this is the case, quit and restart RADi.


Code generation settings     Top of page

Change settings for tabs and spaces to match your editor's settings.
Choose to import whole packages or to create an import statement for each class.
Order code elements to what you are used to.


Compiler settings     Top of page

RADi invokes javac (the Java compiler) when compiling source files. You can set the compiler's compliance level (which corresponds to the -source option of javac) and you can specify which debug information should be added to the generated class files (this corresponds to the -g option).

Compliance level: You should choose 1.4, exept if you have a 5.0 SDK installed and want to edit the source code using features new in v5.0. (Choosing 5.0 means, that the -source option is omitted, so it does no harm if you specify 5.0 for a 1.4 SDK). Specifying 5.0 with a 5.0 SDK will result in class files that can not be processed by a 1.4 JVM.
Generated debug information: Affects the size of the class files generated.
Local variables: Add information about local variables to generated class files.
Line numbers: Add line number information to generated class files.
Source file names: Add source file names to generated class files.

Setting preferred colors     Top of page

Here you can set the editor background color and change or fine-tune grid colors (this is a more esoteric feature, you may want to use it if you experiment with look and feels having a dark background color).


Setting the number of undo steps     Top of page

The number of undo steps affect the required memory size. A layout of about 50 components has a memory footprint of about 200 KB. Each undo step stores the entire layout, so 50 undo steps reqire about 10 MB.