my colleagues have troubles using matisse and the various layout managers. i checked several alternative layoutmanagers and using miglayout seems the best choice so far. in fact it even seems to be superiour compared to all other layout managers.

hence my question: is there a way or are there plans to use miglayout in matisse?

So, did you try GridBagLayout? I haven't been using MyEclipse matisse much yet, but I've used the NetBeans version a LOT.
GroupLayout/FreeDesign is pretty much only useful for trivial panels or dialogs.
For anything more complex I used GridBagLayout, which becomes easy to use once you can see how things react to each parameter change in matisse.

yes, it's what we use mostly next to grouplayout. but i'm not satisfied with gridbaglayout. eg when you have multiple panels with components which are hidden/displayed on demand, it still reserves the full panel size, as if all components were visible.

however, since i've seen how easy to use, readable and yet superior miglayout is, i'd rather suggest to my colleagues to use miglayout for complex forms and program the gui manually instead of using matisse.

Hmm, I haven't had GridBag reserving space for components that aren't visible. The panels resize themselves accordingly.
I'll still take a look at miglayout, though having it supported in the GUI editor would be a big benefit.