How I have to handle options and jpanels

So I've been messing around with how to handle user options. It's amazing how much you learn from just doing. I have an Options object that I initialized in my top level object, the main class. I first tried to pass this object to all the objects created underneath i.e. my Panels. That didn't work because apparently JPanel constructors have to take zero arguments. You could tell that some kind of error occurred when Netbeans couldn't render a live view in the Design gui builder tab. So next I tried creating zero argument panels that right after have their options objects were initialized, I set the options object using a Setter method. This sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. It was really frustrating when sometimes Netbeans was able to render a preview and other times it couldn't. Netbeans is subtle about errors that appear by showing a little red circle with a white line icon at the bottom right of the screen. It took me a while to notice this since it would disappear quickly.

So how do you handle user options that must be synchronized between different objects when you can't pass the object in the constructor? I'm not sure how other programs do it. I'm guessing this isn't just a Java thing. But what I worked on today was a completely different way of handling options between objects. I basically, write the options to a text file and then read the file over and over again.

This presented a different problem though. It is now necessary to read the Plist xml file that iTunes maintains so that iTunesDSM and iTunes do not create duplicates. Reading the file takes a while. Back to my old friend SwingWorker. It's actually pretty easy to use SwingWorker objects. Later I'll post some examples. These have the distinct advantage that they don't freeze a GUI when longer tasks are executed. Basically the task is run in the background and the GUI still interacts with the user.

Now what basically happens is, as soon as an option is selected a SwingWorker object is instantiated to write the new options to the file in the background. When options are accessed later another SwingWorker object reads the file and returns the option object.

Tomorrow I need to read the Options object and set the Options Panel to the settings read in the file. That way, you set the options and they stay. Also, tomorrow the official topic idea is due. For formalization sake, I'll post the topic idea on here as well. The topic is supposed to be about what the final Capstone project will be and I want to use this project as my Capstone idea. If I am able to, then I'll push ahead with formal testing of iTunesDSM.