Thanks! I agree with all of your points and had considered implementing many of them myself: unfortunately, while working on this project I learned that I hate UI programming, and finally got to the point where I just wanted to put out a not-too-totally-horrible prototype and be done with it. :(

The source code was written to employ a bit of an MVC architecture, with the intention of making it easier for other people to implement a better UI afterwards... but in retrospect just rewriting the whole thing under a better platform than Java might be the best approach, if anyone wants to do that.