Re: OFF-TOPIC 100%java GUI = useful?

[Per Bothner <per@bothner.com>]

ashe@boulder.qms.com (Steven Ashe) writes:
> If I could summarize what I heard, it was: "the AWT may be a horrible
> interface, but its _the_ interface, and no matter how good an alternative
> might be, if its not AWT, its not useful."

I would not say that.  However, in spite of its name, "java-discuss" is
not a list for discussing Java in general.  Its focus is Free
*implementation* of Java, especially in the context of Gcc, Gcj,
and libgcj;  its focus is not re-design of Java.  Hence, what is
appropriate is discussion on how to get useful implementations
of the existing standards, AWT and Swing.  Something that would
give a useful subset of the AWT and/or Swing APIs is on-topic.
(Note:  they don't need to be complete - a subset of either that
you can actually do something with would be a good start.)
Providing an alternative API may be interesting;  if may even be
very useful to people *using* Gcj+libgcj;  however, it isn't
strictly relevant to the main focus of this list.

Also, questions about the AWT as an API are orthogonal to
the question of using raw X protocol at the low level protocol.
For example, I can certainly imagine an Awt peer implementation that
is written in 100% pure Java by sending raw X packets, and I think
that would be very useful.  I can also see better APIs built on *top*
of Java;  that is of course the point of Swing.
-- 
	--Per Bothner
bothner@pacbell.net  per@bothner.com   http://home.pacbell.net/bothner/