Re: FreeSwing, EvolutionAlgorythms

[Per Bothner <per at bothner dot com>]

Tim Wilkinson <tim@transvirtual.com> writes:

> We'd be interested in this - and since Swing is 100% Java there's no
> JNI/CNI issues.

Sun's implementation of Swing is 100% Java.  It is not clear that is the
right solution for a free re-implementation.  For example, Swing has a
pluggable look-and-feel archictecture.  When running under (say) Gtk,
it may make more sense to just make the look-and-feel be a Gtk theme.
This suggests that Swing Components should have a Peers, which would
be themable Gtk widgets.  Such an approach would be quite different
from Sun's approach, but would build on Gtk and should require many
fewer classes.  The parts of the Swing API that most applications
use may be much easier to implement this way, and much more
efficient.  However, a custom look-and-feel in Java would be more
ineffcient, since it would be a special "theme" that just calls
back to the Java code.

Of ocurse this is just a vague idea.  I'm just pointing out that we
may be able to support the most useful parts of the Swing API by
building on top on non-Java APIs.  If that is a the right long-term
solution is less clear.
-- 
	--Per Bothner
bothner@pacbell.net  per@bothner.com   http://www.bothner.com/~per/