<AWT Dev> CFV: Should we sponsor the fb-toolkit Project?

[Konstantin Voloshin]

Vote: yes

Though, I probably see this project from different point.

Judging from my game development experience, virtually every game, 
including high-budget monsters like Half-Life 2, seem to every time 
invent a proprietary internal GUI logic. I mean UI, where the user can 
start new game, save/load, adjust options.

That UI is very much alike "ordinary" UI (and also SWING). But it's 
usually considered a non-critical part, thus usually has a lot of 
inconveniences and incompletenesses.

I think, we can invent some "pure" interface required by internal 
SWING-logic. And then, cut (abstract) SWING-logic from any native 
peculiarities. To be widely reused, and also to encourage use of Java :)

AWT could then be split into 2 parts. One would provide native widgets 
support, and the other would implement that interface for SWING for 
supported operating systems.

Some steps are already made in that direction (by having peers and 
toolkits), but I think OpenJDK can benefit from going there much further.

P.S.
Back to games, they usually don't want all power of SWING. So it would 
be nice, if they don't have to implement that SWING-interface 
completely. E.g. if they use only buttons and only with mouse, they 
should only have to implement drawing of rectangles and font-symbols, 
and provide mouse position. But these are issues for more detailed 
discussion.

P.P.S.
I saw some GUI-helpers bundled by Microsoft into some new version of 
DirectX. Can't tell for sure, but from the first glance, they seemed too 
heavy, clumsy, and monolithic. IMO, it could be nice, to compete, and 
provide clients with ease and flexibility of SWING also in this area. 
For free, and by improving OpenJDK code at the same time :)

P.P.P.S.
I also felt appropriate to CC this message to discuss at openjdk.


Jeff Dinkins wrote:
> 
> Tom Marble and Steph Meslin-Weber have proposed a framebuffer-based AWT
> toolkit Project [1].
> 
> Should the AWT Group sponsor this Project?
> 
> Please cast your vote by replying to this message with either
> 
>     Vote: yes
> 
> or
> 
>     Vote: no
> 
> as the first line of the message body.
> 
> You may indicate the reason for your decision, if you wish, on subsequent
> lines. This is optional and not required.
> 
> Votes are due by midnight UTC this Tuesday, 12 June 2007, after which
> time I'll tally the votes and post a summary to this list and to
> discuss at openjdk.java.net.
> 
> Only Members of the AWT Group are eligible to vote on this decision [2].
> 
> The current Members are:
> 
>   Artem Ananiev
>   Vyacheslav Baranov
>   Dmitry Cherepanov
>   Andrei Dmitriev
>   Denis Fokin
>   Yuri Nesterenko
>   Anthony Petrov
>   Oleg Sukhodolsky
>   Anton Tarasov
>   Alexey Utkin
>   Konstantin Voloshin
> 
> thanks,
> 
> jeff
> 
> [1] http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/announce/2007-May/000001.html
> [2] http://blogs.sun.com/mr/entry/cosmology
> 
>