RE: [platform-swt-dev] Support for JSR-198 (was SWT port for Swing!)

["Christian Gruber" <cgruber@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Foster
> 
> > If SWT supported pure Java deployment, far more potential 
> users would 
> > be willing to try it out.  With SWT's current take-it-or-leave-it 
> > approach, the vast majority of Java users will simply leave it.
> 
> They will leave it, anyway, once they realize it doesn't give 
> them what native SWT does. If SWT is as non-native as Swing 
> and not much faster, why wouldn't a "100% pure" Java 
> developer just use Swing?
> 
Please remember, Bob, Swing is horrible on so many levels.  The largest
of which is that it is bloatware because it tried to be not only a
quasi-MVC GUI library (AWT done right) but also a themable, flavourable,
pluggable thing with so many layers.  The latter goal, and a kind of
strange MVC notion meant that it ended up being slow, bad to code for
(XMLTalk and other such things improve that, but could do that for
SWT+Component-layer), slow, needlessly freaky about gui theming, and
slow.

A pure Java solution, with a simple and elegant base-line widget kit
that would be source-compatible with all the native equivalents would be
quite helpful, in my view.

The "why don't they just go use Swing" assumes that if cross-platform is
the goal, Swing is the answer.  Swing is not the answer if I can get
something better aside from considerations of platform. 

My understanding of the goals of SWT were to provide a "fast" and
"simple widget model".  That can't be entirely accomplished with a
pure-java approach in all cases, but a "pretty-fast" and "simple" can be
accomplished and add the "portable" check-box can also be checked.  

Regards,
Christian.