[news.eclipse.platform.swt] Re: SWT and GUI classes in IBM Smalltalk

["Emil Crumhorn" <emil.crumhorn@xxxxxxxxx>]

Allow me to make you happy (I think):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Widget_Toolkit

The roots of SWT go back to work that Object Technology International, or 
OTI, did in the 1990s when creating multiplatform, portable, native widget 
interfaces for Smalltalk (originally for OTI Smalltalk, which became IBM 
Smalltalk in 1993). IBM Smalltalk's Common Widget layer provided fast, 
native access to multiple platform widget sets while still providing a 
common API without suffering the "lowest common denominator" (LCD) problem 
typical of other portable graphical user interface (GUI) toolkits. IBM was 
developing their VisualAge development integrated development environment 
(IDE) that was written in Smalltalk. They decided to open-source the 
project, which led to the development of Eclipse, intended to compete 
against other IDEs such as Microsoft Visual Studio. Eclipse is written in 
Java, and IBM developers, deciding that they needed a toolkit that had 
"native look and feel" and "native performance", created SWT as a Swing 
replacement[2].

Regards,
Emil

"Oliver Plohmann" <oliver@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message 
news:643b09e9f52f19ac1bc72fefff1892fd$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Hi there,
>
> I once had a short look at SWT. The approach with using a shell and 
> display object reminded me of the GUI framework in IBM's former VisualAge 
> for Smalltalk system. My question is whether anybody knows whether both 
> frameworks have common roots. If so would be a help for me to qualify for 
> an eclipse RCP project which would be that cool to work on ... ;-).
>
> Regards, Oliver Plohmann
>