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

["Jeff Brown" <j9brown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It may not have been mentioned here, but there has been some previous
work on writing AWT peers on SWT widgets.  IIRC, the project was
called BBAWT though I'm not sure what its present status is or if
the current project maintainers would be willing to open it up for
further development and eventual integration into the Eclipse runtime
environment as a (free?) plugin.

The last time I looked at the project, the code base seemed quite solid.
Only minor alterations to the handling of the event loop and instantiation
of a Display object seemed necessary to make it work within Eclipse.
[The code to do so was present but inaccessible from the public API
so far as I could tell].  The rest would just be bug fixes and feature
building.

If you start from scratch, good luck!  It does not look like a cake walk to
me.

Jeff.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Stanchfield" <scott@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <platform-swt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, November 23, 2001 2:11 PM
Subject: RE: [platform-swt-dev] SWTToolkit as AWT Peers


> Cool -- thanks for the input.
> You're right on what I meant by running apps (starting them from within
> eclipse, to test, debug, whatever)
>
> Anyone happen to know what the deal with the sun.awt classes is? In JDK
1.1,
> the AWT components just used peers. In JDK 1.2 and beyond, they call all
> sorts of sun.awt classes. The biggest annoyance is that the SWTToolkit has
> to extend sun.awt.SunToolkit, unless I want to totally reimplement many of
> the AWT components themselves (which becomes a licensing issue).
>
> Looks like some of the stuff in there may be helpful, but I'm a little
> nervous...
>
> This project gets bigger by the minute...
>
> Thanks!
> -- Scott
>   -----Original Message-----
>   From: platform-swt-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:platform-swt-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Mike
Wilson/OTT/OTI
>   Sent: Friday, November 23, 2001 1:32 PM
>   To: platform-swt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
>   Subject: Re: [platform-swt-dev] SWTToolkit as AWT Peers
>
>
>
>   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
>   ==============================================================
>
>   _______________________________________________
>   platform-swt-dev mailing list
>   platform-swt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
>   http://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/platform-swt-dev
>
>
>
>