[Mono-list] System.SwingForms ;)

[Stefan Matthias Aust]

Per Arneng wrote:

> So i was thinking if it would be possible to try to make a swing library
> on top of GTK# or something. Im not sure but i think that java.swing
> is built on top of java.awt. So mayby it is best to build awt on top
> of gtk# and then swing on top of that.

Well, the fact that Swing is based on AWT is simply legacy.  Swing would
need only a very simple interface to the platform windowing system: some
clipped, overlapping region to draw on and some source to get all kinds
of input events from.  In addition, swing needs some 2D drawing
capabilities, especially if you need true unicode font support and fast
drawing.

I don't know GTK that well, but if it provides some canvas to draw on,
you could certainly create something like Swing upon that.  However,
Swing is a _large_ framwork with some 2000 classes and ten thousands of
methods.

As mono's JIT is probably not that fast than Suns hotspot VM, a
swing-like framework on top of GTK would suffer from the same problems
as Swing: a reputation of beeing slow (which isn't already true at all
but people believe it).  Besides the VM speed, the penality for doing
native calls would be the other factor that can make a Swing-like API
fast or slow.

> This can later be merged with ex gnu:classpath in some way when
> and if a java frontend is added to mono.

An interesting idea would be to try to compile a Swing written in Java
with an abstraction layer that allows one to put it on top of different
windowing apis to CIL so that both projects could profit from.

However, why don't we add a proper MVC (or MVP which is a variant I like
better, google for Dolphin Smalltalk and MVP for more details) to GTK#?
  If Dolphin Smalltalk can do this for the Windows API, it should be
possible to do for C# and GTK#, too.


bye
-- 
Stefan Matthias Aust   //
www.3plus4software.de // Inter Deum Et Diabolum Semper Musica Est