Program design assistance.... Component moving

Question

OK, I really need some assistance... I'm trying to build a organisation system for a 6hr system whereby I have several different people each who get meetings scheduled at 30minute intervals. The way I want to display the data is as a scrollpane, with a people column and a timelined section then a sequence of panels or buttons which can be moved around to alter the scheduling.
People 9am.................10am................11am....... etc
|_______| |_____||_____||_____||_____||_____||_____|
|_name_ | |__a__||__b__||__c__||__d__||__e__||_____|
|_______| |_____||_____||_____||_____||_____||_____|
|_______| |_____||_____||_____||_____||_____||_____|
the functionality I am seeking is to be able to drag an appointment (eg panel/button 'e') to a different slot (eg b) which would then shuffle b to c, c to d etc. I'd also like to be able to move an appointment to a different person which would then shuffle all following appointments left to fill the gap, and push the appointments on the new person's list to the right to allow the new appointment to be placed (pushing an appointment off the end of the schedule).I have used swing in the past but am at a loss as to how I should allow these panels to be moved and record the fact that they have.
If anyone has any ideas as to part or all of this matter, it would be greatly appreciated as I really need the support. I can be emailed at [email protected] should more information be required.
Many thanks

Answer 1

You should consult the DnD and Swing Transfer documentation bundled with the J2SE 1.4 documentation. Here is some very, very skeletal code of how to handle the "drop" part of what you're doing.
     private DropTargetListener dtl = new DropTargetAdapter(){          
          public void drop(DropTargetDropEvent dtde) {
               try {
                    int r = tbl.rowAtPoint(dtde.getLocation());
                    int c = tbl.columnAtPoint(dtde.getLocation());
                    Object obj =
                         dtde.getTransferable().getTransferData(DataFlavor.stringFlavor);
                    table.setValueAt(obj, r, c);
                    dtde.dropComplete(true);
               catch(Exception ex){
                    dtde.dropComplete(false);
        // later
       tbl.setDropTarget(new DropTarget(tbl, dtl));tbl is an instance of JTable and table an instance of TableModel.
This shows how to deal with mouse events inside a table and how
to address one half of the dnd functionality.
Hope that helps a little,
Fritz