Re: [platform-swt-dev] General Question

[Mike_Wilson@xxxxxxxxxx]

In the early days, it was thought that
some of our users might need to be able to make fixes to the widgets for
their own use faster than we could get them into the common codebase. If
the widgets had been marked final, then those users would have been stuck,
since they could not change the existing classes (without shipping a non-standard
version of the SWT plugin -- ugh!). By allowing them to build a subclass
with their changes in it, they could avoid being so closely tied to us
(i.e. they could ship before we could get the fix in). In practice though,
this hasn't really happened.

Having the widgets not be final also
means that, if someone really does not agree with the way a particular
widget works, they can build a delta off of that widget by subclassing
and reaching into the implementation. Obviously, doing this is nasty, since
the SWT team does not make *any* guarantees about the internals of the
implementation staying constant, and the code in the subclass could be
potentially broken with each new release. 

In any case, having the ability to do
these kinds of things was important to one of our early adopters, and that
is the "political" reason Steve was talking about.

McQ.

Steve Northover/Ottawa/IBM@IBMCA Sent by: platform-swt-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx 03/03/03 05:43 PM Please respond to platform-swt-dev

To:        platform-swt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx         cc:                 Subject:        Re: [platform-swt-dev] General Question

They used to be final but it was decided for political reasons that this
was too restrictive.

"Federico Daniel Tello Gentile" <fgentile@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent by: platform-swt-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx 03/03/2003 06:49 PM Please respond to platform-swt-dev

To:        <platform-swt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>        cc:                Subject:        [platform-swt-dev] General Question

Many widgets say in the javadoc that they are not intended to be
subclassed. Why aren't they final, then?
There's even a method that checks whether the widget are inside the
original package, but it it possible to circunvent it. 

Why not make all the classes thet are not intended to be subclassed
final then?

Just curiosity, not a coding/design criticism...
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