AWT

[Thomas Reilly]

Jeff Sturm <jsturm@sigma6.com> writes:

> I have heard from others that it gets worse with JDK 1.2 and the Java2D
> api... specifically that font rasterizing is now done in the client too.

Ouch.  I don't understand this whole %100 Pure Java phenomenon.  I'd
love to see the expression on the guy's face who dreamed up that whole
campaign when he here's about gcj.

Getting back to the whole lightweight/heavyweight debate it seems
pretty clear from everyones comments that a first go around should be
a peer architecture with GTK+.

I followed the link someone posted and found Sun's 3 reasons for using
lightweights:

   1.Native windows can be heavyweight, so it's undesirable to have too many of them. 

Doesn't see to be right.  I use this plotting tool called xmgr that
uses tons of Motif widgets and has never seemed sluggish.  My
impression with GTK+ apps is that they are even more snappy than Motif
so I think we can safely say this point isn't valid.  If it is a
problem then the place to fix it is probably in GTK+, which is
possible thanks to free software.

   2.Native windows are opaque, so they can't be used to implement transparent regions. 

This wouldn't seem to be super important.  Does anybody know if GTK+
has support for this?  Doesn't the X11 Shape extension allow you to do
all kinds of arbitrary clipping that could be used for transparency?

   3.Native windows are handled differently across platforms, so the AWT has to struggle to maintain a consistent view across these varied platforms. 

Herein probably lies the true answer, they had a hard time porting
everything and keeping the Windows and X11 implementations consistent.
GTK+ pretty much rules out this one too.  And if platform consistency
problems do crop up they can be fixed in GTK+.

--
Tom Reilly
Allaire Corp.
http://www.allaire.com