[UI] Native vs. portable widgets: Eclipse SWT

[Bill Schwab]

Matt,

I suspect the author is heavily biased toward native widgets.  Note the
assumption that they will out-perform emulated widgets.  All it takes to
turn that around is a good VM, careful coding on the emulation layer,
and a carelessly written native widget library and/or one heavy on eye
candy.  Depending on the design of the native platform, emulated widgets
can shortcut cumbersome uses of a message queue to gain a design
advantage.  It is not at all clear that native widgets will always win
on speed, especially on "older" hardware.

That said, I have no objection to making native widgets available.  If
for no other reason, some native widget discipline might be good for
Squeak, and there are times when it would be nice to have one native
window per system window - and other times when that would be wasteful.

Since we already have emulated widgets, "all" we need to do is keep them
alive while enhancing native widget support.  I believe that should be
our goal.  With MVP, switching between them probably should be as simple
as changing the view hierarchy to be used.

Bill




Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
University of Florida
Department of Anesthesiology
PO Box 100254
Gainesville, FL 32610-0254

Email: bschwab at anest.ufl.edu
Tel: (352) 846-1285
FAX: (352) 392-7029

>>> tapplek at gmail.com 11/29/07 3:21 PM >>>
I found this FAQ entry for Eclipse very interesting:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/FAQ_Why_does_Eclipse_use_SWT%3F

It discusses the merits of both native and portable widgets, and
why eclipse chose the native SWT rather than the portable Swing.

This may be obvious flamebait, but it could also be interesting.
First person to reply is banned from planet Jupiter ;).

-- 
Matthew Fulmer -- http://mtfulmer.wordpress.com/
Help improve Squeak Documentation: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/808
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