[news.eclipse.tools] Why should I use SWT?

[michaelw@xxxxxxxxxx (Mike Walker)]

We are just about to embark upon a new Java project based on the Eclipse
IDE. We will be building Eclipse plug-ins to add our functionality to the
IDE. I am, however, deeply concerned that the Eclipse project has made the
wrong decision to go off and invent a new set of widgets - the SWT -
instead of using Swing.

I have read through the document explaining how the SWT works, and I can
see a lot of thought has gone into making a good design, but I still don't
see the justification for the SWT as opposed to using Swing.

My concerns are as follows:

1) Platform neutrality - do you claim that the SWT will be as platform
neutral as Swing? I can see how you can make the basic functionality work
the same on all platforms but can you really make *all* of the behaviours
of all the widgets work the same over all platforms? I can speak from
personal experience - I worked on porting the AWT to OS/2 for a couple of
years and the amount of pain we went through to get every little thing to
work just right was incredible - e.g. triggering events at the right time,
input focus handling, sizing correctly, font handling, code pages, etc.
OS/2 is very similar to Windows and yet we had a terrible time with these
issues and others. I can't see how the SWT will be able to avoid these
very same problems.

2) Functionality. We have requirements (in IBM) to support multiple
languages and accessibility functions. Does the SWT provide that support?
Do you have Unicode support? Do you support BIDI langauges (Hebrew and
Arabic?), or the Asian input methods? If not, how long before that support
is there? All this is supported in Swing (after many person-years of
effort) today.

I guess that my main problem is that I can't see the justification for the
SWT. I came only surmise that you are concerned about performance since
that can be the only advantage. However, with the speed of today's
processors, cheap memory, and advances in JIT complier technology, this is
becoming a much less of an issue.

Am I missing something? Can someone spell out to me the reasons why the
SWT was invented?

(Note: - I really like the idea of Eclipse and am looking forward to using
it - it is just this one area I am very concerned about).

Mike