Re: [platform-swt-dev] SWTToolkit as AWT Peers

["Mike Wilson/OTT/OTI" <Mike_Wilson@xxxxxxx>]

If you're looking for ways to make AWT based visual plugins for Eclipse, the best thing to have would be an AWT implemented, as yours is, on top of SWT widgets. There certainly *could* still be problems with multiple distinct AWT-on-SWT implementations, but it seems like they should be fairly minor if all were following the dictates of the SWT layer. Any one such, should be much better integrated than one based on understanding the internals of the way SWT and AWT (separately) deal with the o/s (as the org.eclipse.swt.internal.awt.win32.SWT_AWT hack is).

So, to this extent, "dictating an AWT peer implementation" is not as important as "constraining it to be an AWT with SWT peers implementation".

Having said that, I think if you were to provide one which worked well and played nice with the rest of the u/i, there wouldn't be much pressure to have another.

I'm not sure what you're asking in the last part of your question, but if you mean "applications run from within Eclipse", then yes there would be no constraints on what toolkit was used by them. They do indeed run in their own VMs.

McQ.

"Scott Stanchfield" <scott@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent by: platform-swt-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx 11/23/2001 11:50 AM Please respond to platform-swt-dev

To:        <platform-swt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>         cc:                 Subject:        [platform-swt-dev] SWTToolkit as AWT Peers

As some of you may know, I've been working on a set of AWT peers that use
SWT as the "native widgets". This has been going well so far, but I've hit a
point that I think needs to be discussed.

How exactly can we use this for plugins in Eclipse?

To use alternate AWT toolkits, you specify the awt.toolkit system property
when a VM starts or using System.setProperty().
It appears (from some testing) that once AWT has loaded its toolkit, you
can't change it by setting the awt.toolkit property again in a program.
I think this would mean that the first plugin that uses AWT, we're stuck
with what it used for the AWT toolkit (whether it's the default toolkit or
one it specified).

So, for plugins to work properly and consistently, we'd have to set the AWT
toolkit to use at eclipse startup.

The question is, are we willing to "dictate" an AWT peer implementation for
plugins?

It seems like the "right" thing to do, treating "Eclipse" as the platform.

Applications are run in their own VM, right? Assuming so (which I'm nearly
100% sure of), this choice would not affect them. Apps could use the default
toolkit or whatever they want...
-- Scott

==============================================================
Scott Stanchfield    scott@xxxxxxxxxxxx    http://javadude.com

Lead author of "Effective VisualAge for Java, Version 3"
                                      http://javadude.com/evaj

VisualAge for Java Tips and Tricks     http://javadude.com/vaj

AWT & Swing FAQ Manager, jGuru.com
Visit for Java Enlightenment!             http://www.jguru.com
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