Re: [platform-swt-dev] GTK in CVS

[Havoc Pennington <hp@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Steve_Northover@xxxxxxx writes:
> > I'll try to check these out in the examples. The Sun guy doing the GTK
> > AWT peers ended up writing a simple custom widget that was a variant
> > of fixed, so he could get the desired behavior exactly right.
> 
> I was hoping that we wouldn't have to do this.  SWT contains no custom C 
> code, only wrappers
> for operating system calls.

Right. Well, it can probably be done with only wrappers, but most
likely that would involve enough weird hacks that the resulting mess
wouldn't be worth making just to stick to the "no custom C code"
guideline. The custom C code here should be really simple and
straightforward.

There was some discussion of java-gnome earlier - I'm not sure if
java-gnome supports deriving new widgets in Java; the Python and C++
bindings do support that, but it's a bit complicated to implement on
the language binding side in a reliable fashion.

A java/gtk binding that does allow it will involve some custom C code
(in the binding library) and add some extra overhead vs. your current
approach, however. Language binding overhead usually isn't a big deal
but might be for something as large as Eclipse; the Motif port seems
to be chuggy just because of the sheer number of widgets involved.

I guess we still don't know if a custom widget is required though; I
don't have a good handle on what the current resize issues are, yet.
Also, as usual, GTK 1.2 vs. GTK 2 is going to make a difference.

Havoc