<AWT Dev> Better support for external Toolkits/GraphicEnvs

[Phil Race]

Roman,

The changes you are talking about are probably far reaching and sound 
somewhat like the fb-toolkit proposal itself.  This is tantamount to 
replacing
the entire AWT and 2D stack and I don't see that as a useful goal.
As noted in my initial email to the fbtoolkit proposal, toolkits are not 
pluggable, nor was
there any design intent that they ever should be.  
fb-toolkit is a separate project. I expect it will remain so for the 
forseeable future.

-phil.

Roman Kennke wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> At the moment I'm trying to get GNU Classpath's GTK peers (and a handful
> of own peer/graphicsenv implementations for embedded systems) working
> with OpenJDK. I'm encountering a couple of problems and I ask myself if
> the OpenJDK project has any interest in patches to improve support for
> external toolkits.
>
> For example, there's a bunch of places with code like this:
>
>     private void initPeer() {
>         if (Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit() instanceof HeadlessToolkit){
>             peer =
> ((HeadlessToolkit)Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit()).createKeyboardFocusManagerPeer(this);
>         }
>         if (Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit() instanceof SunToolkit){        
>             peer =
> ((SunToolkit)Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit()).createKeyboardFocusManagerPeer(this);                  
>         }
>     }
>
> Obviously, this wouldn't work with anything except the built-in
> toolkits.
>
> Other areas where I suspect big problems are fonts and probably images.
> It seems like OpenJDK has no support for a pluggable font implementation
> at all. However, the GTK peers rely on their own implementation (which
> is abstracted behind an extension of FontPeer).
>
> With the new FB-Toolkit project approved, I'd guess that there would be
> interest in developing a clean(er) interface and allowing alternative
> peers and graphics environments to be plugged in, is that correct? If so
> I would prepare some patches soon.
>
> /Roman
>