Name: rmT116609 Date: 05/03/2004


A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
Frequently we use JCheckBox and JRadioButton to display non-editable information to users. Unfortunately, these two components are always editable when enabled. We can't just disable them, because that doesn't convey the information we need to convey to the user. This meaning is basically "this item is applicable and has this value" - disabling it greys out the component, which users take to mean "this item is not applicable and its value is irrelevant". There are a number of workarounds, but each has its drawbacks:

- implementing our own widget means that the checkboxes are not covered by Plaf without a lot of work.

- removing all the listeners on the objects is a pain to code & maintain and not necessarily reliable

- overtly stomping on any changes to the components selected property is also a pain to code & maintain and not necessarily reliable

- creating our own subclasses means we have to implement this behavior twice, probably reusing one or more of the methods above, and may not be very portable or IDE friendly.

In any of the above options, it means that the capability would not apply to any third party components that are subclassed from JToggleButton, JCheckBox or JRadioButton.

So what we would like is an editable boolean property for JToggleButton. If this is true, the user may select/deselect the component just as they do now. If the editable property is false, the user cannot change the value of the property.

JUSTIFICATION :
Saves work, makes it consistent with other components, makes code using these more reliable.
(Incident Review ID: 260499)
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