Jonathan Mark Brooks wrote:
>
> I suspect that they didn't get the point. What people are asking for is
> that the graphical elements of java be implemented with GTK+ rather than
> Motif or some other platform specific GUI kit (GTK exists for win32 now as
> well...). Even Swing must at some level call on GUI elements that are
> coded not with Java but with a lower-level graphics library.
What is it exactly that people are asking for?
Yet another implementation of the AWT (YAAWT) or a good GUI?
It should certainly be possible to do YAAWT with
<name-your-favorite-toolkit>. It will look different from all the other
YAAWTs, and add yet another layer of complexity to the already difficult
problem of writing Java apps that look good on all platforms.
Swing is a good GUI -- in fact, an excellent GUI -- with a good set of
widgets and a collection of L&Fs that look good everywhere.
Unfortunately, it suffers from some serious performance problems for a
couple of reasons:
1) Everything is implemented in Java.
2) "Lightweight" components are anything but lightweight. They move a
significant amount of activity from the X server to the client, where it
is handled much less efficiently and with much higher network bandwidth
costs between client and X server. (This is not a new issue; Motif dealt
with it years ago in the widgets vs gadgets debate.)
Several things *could* happen to improve the Swing performance story:
1) Portions of Swing could be implemented natively.
2) Swing could increase its reliance on native windows rather than
owning everything below the top-level window.
3) The relentless upward march of clockspeeds could make Swing
performance acceptable, as finally happened to MSWindows a few years ago
:-).
Nathan Meyers
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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