This facility is used by JBuilder's visual designer, by BeansExpress, and by some of the more powerful wizards. JOT's full functionality is also available to OpenTools. An early draft of the JOT JavaDoc is linked here but not yet integrated into the full OpenTools JavaDoc set. The Properties System provides a standardized way of reading and writing user preferences. Each setting is represented by an instance of a Property subclass, where different subclasses manage different kinds of storage and provide default values for the property.
Users typically interact with properties through pages on property dialogs.
Registering a PropertyGroup with the PropertyManager gives your OpenTool a chance to provide a PropertyPageFactory whenever a property dialog is displayed for a given topic. Topics can include global properties, properties associated with subsystems such as the editor, and individual projects and files. The JBuilder help system uses an HTML browser and an indexing scheme based on JDataStore technology. OpenTools will allowed to integrate with the JBuilder help system in a future release, including the ability to update help indexes. There are a variety of utility classes included in JBuilder that can help OpenTools maintain a consistent look and feel.