-------- Original Message --------
Subject: JOS GUI issues
Date: Fri, 02 Jul 1999 14:30:25 -0400
From: Sean Cribbs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Organization: Institute for Defense Analyses
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hi,
I'm a regular visitor to the JOS web page. I have interests in GUI and
networking and kernel issues. I noticed you were a regular commenter on
GUI issues and I didn't want to bother registering yet so I thought I
might send you an email.
After noticing some of your comments in the Traditional GUI group,
specifically under the Task Widget section, an epiphany came to me. The
real challenge of creating a standard graphical user interface for JOS
will be porting the java.awt.peer package to the platform. In some of
the other discussions, people commented on what they liked and didn't
like from other operating systems. The whole idea of Swing's pluggable
look & feel architecture is to allow users to customize their
environment to suit them. I propose that it may be possible to map the
required AWT "peers" into the Swing package, creating the ability to
completely customize even standard AWT components. The implementation
of the peers would only require a Component peer and maybe a Container
and Lightweight peer. All the other peers could be mapped to
lightweight components in the Swing package. This would save a lot of
brain-racking native implementation. But wait, you say, what about the
heavyweight components in Swing? How would you create a frame (AWT Frame
or JFrame or otherwise)? The FramePeer could be mapped to
JInternalFrame, allowing them to be customizable as well. Then the only
thing required is a customized JDesktopPane as the root container in the
GUI, under which all windows could be opened. Additionally, a
lightweight component could be created to mimic the behavior of the
WindowPeer. After all this is complete, the user could replace the
entire L&F of his GUI just by specifying the L&F class. Pretty cool,
huh?
Anyway, that's my idea. Please comment/criticize/etc, and post to the
JOS server or appropriate mailing list if you can. Thanks.
Sean Cribbs
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
_______________________________________________
UI maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://jos.org/mailman/listinfo/ui
