Torsten.Bergmann at phaidros.com wrote:
> >- Have you thought about the "tech" side of it? It sounds like you would
> >like to have a Squeak-side abstraction layer and then have different
> >"backends" with one being Morphic itself and the others typically being
> >native kits. Read about the philosophy of SWT? (kinda interesting IMHO)
> 
> Yes - SWT (which is used by Java for building the Eclipse/WSAD UI) is 
> a nice way to integrate native widgets.
> 
> See how it works at: 
> http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-SWT-Design-1/SWT-Design-1.html
> http://astares.smallscript.org/technology/technology/eclbehinswt.html
> 
> There are already SWT libraries for major platforms available - maybe
> anything that is needed are calls from Squeak's FFI.

No, actually IIRC - the native side of SWT is deliberately thin -
instead most of the logic is on the Java side. Don't have the numbers in
lines of code in my head though but the majority of SWT is written in
Java, so FFI will not be enough. :) (actually at the time I even got
confused if these libraries are "normal ones" or some JNI-funky special
things, not sure)

I even contemplated "semit auto cross-compiling" the Java side into
Squeak code and then somehow reuse the .dll/.so files in SWT. Yeah I
know, it was a "wild" idea. :)

> On the other hand using native widgets makes it much harder to switch
> to new platforms ...

Personally I think "the more options the better". :)

> Bye
> Torsten

regards, Göran