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I would like to advocate eliminating the need for a separate .FORM file for GUI forms. Things would be that much simpler with everything in just the .java file. There would be no way for the form defintion to become separated from the code and possibly lost altogether (it's rare, but I've seen it happen). Also, the form definition and code could never get "out of sync" as a result of checking out incompatible files from version control in an attempt to revert to a prior version. How about just putting the XML form definition in a guarded /*...*/ comment at the end of the .java file?
Do you think it will be easier to read and develop such a mixed file? What's the next step? Mix all definition (or metadata) files with the logic files?
*** Issue 53134 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
I've been hearing lots voices and opinions about two-way editing. While the separation of UI and application logic is fine, it is not nicely doable or enforceable if the primary way of expressing UI is code. And seeing the code, people always want to edit it. Would be nice to have a decent standard resource format with mapping to java code. In the current situation we consider the two-way editing as worth doing as it provides significant adventages but still have no concrete plans about it. It is indeed a very complex task...
See also issue 26938.