Re: AWT is dead now

[Cedric Berger <cedric at wireless-networks dot com>]

> >>> Cedric Berger <cedric@wireless-networks.com> 20-Mar-00 7:59:21 PM
> >>>
>
> >Nobody uses AWT widgets anymore.
>
> Frankly this is nonsense.

Well, than show me some real *applications* that uses AWT. And I'm not
talking
about applets (not very relevant in a GCJ context) or book's examples.
I'm talking about real, useful, applications.

> >I've never seen a new AWT application the last two years.
> >In fact, Swing is widely recognized as the better GUI toolkit
> >availabe today
>
> Who have you been talking to? Many people who make their living out
> of writing Java agree that Swing is bloated and badly designed. Any
> close analysis reveals this to be true, at least in part.

I'v not talking to anybody, I'v read newsgroup like this one, but
more important, I've developped (big) GUI applications in MFC, AWT
and Swing the last three years...

> >I think that most people agree that Swing has two
> >major advantages over AWT:
>
> >1) platform independence: you don't need to test thing on many
> >platform, the code is the same, the bugs are the same, ...
>
> Uh... yes. But only when the underlying AWT is the same, since the
> AWT is used to implement all Swing primitives.

Yeah, but fortunately, Swing only uses a small subset of AWT.

> >1) implementing the basic (low level) AWT functionalities.
> >Basically Window/Frame/Component/Container/Canvas and
> >event handling.
>
> Which is in fact most of the work of building the AWT.

you don't have to implements
- all widgets (buttons, ...),
- special containers like scrollpanes
- menu / popups, ...
- file chooser,
- .......


> >2) implementing Java2D (it's probably more difficult than 1),
> >but it can be done later and its probably a lot of fun to do.
>
> Volunteering are you? Again this is a hell of a lot of work.

It will have to be done anyway, if peoples want to develop advanced
graphics applications (Games maybee?) GTK/AWT will not replace
that. See Per Brothner's suggestion.

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