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

["David Whiteman" <david_whiteman@xxxxxxx>]

I'm not part of the SWT or Eclipse team, but I'll tell you a few things that
I find compelling about the SWT story (this is my personal opinion and not
any official stance by OTI or IBM):

* Native widgets will always perform better than emulated ones.  This is
most important in very small embedded environments.  Sure, processors will
get faster and memory is cheap, but we are constantly trying to fit
computing power into smaller and smaller boxes.
* While there are some impressive efforts to try and emulate the native
look-and-feel, it never seems to be done quite right.  Users can tell the
difference, and your interface will seem clunky.  In addition, when a new
LAF comes out for your favorite OS and you are using emulated widgets, you
then have to wait for that LAF to be developed and the kinks worked out
before you can actually use it.
* When you use native widgets, you can leverage tools for automated testing
(such as WinRunner) and leverage peripherals (such as the wheel mouse) with
no added support necessary

My .02,
David
--
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David Whiteman
david_whiteman@xxxxxxx
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"Mike Walker" <michaelw@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:9ickh6$h4s$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 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
>