[RFC] plugin: use an AppContext to support applets running with different look and feels

[Omair Majid]

On 10/07/2010 05:33 PM, Omair Majid wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The attached patch is an (updated) attempt to fix PR565 [1]. The patch
> does two things:
>
> 1. It creates a ThreadGroup for the applet earlier in the initialization
> phase.
>
> The applet's intialization code (currently) creates 3 threads (most of
> this code is in NetxPanel, AppletPanel and Launcher). The first thread
> is what calls applet.init(), applet.start() etc. It creates the second
> thread to load the applet (so loading can be interrupted). This second
> thread is what calls Launcher.launch() which ends up creating the third
> thread to actually load the applet. This third thread is created in a
> new ThreadGroup and has the JNLPClassLoader set as the
> ContextClassLoader. The patch makes sure that all three threads are
> created in the same ThreadGroup and the appropriate context class loader
> is set for all of them. This part of the patch is attached to the bug
> report. With this patch, all the threads of an applet can load the
> classes for the custom look and feel.
>
> 2. Allows different applets to use different look and feels.
>
> The patch creates a new AppContext for each applet ThreadGroup. This
> means that each applet instance can set its own look and feel and not
> affect any other applet (which might lead to visual inconsistency as
> well as errors in loading custom look and feels). The AppContext class
> (part of sun.awt package) contains a map from ThreadGroup to AppContext
> that Swing and AWT can use to make sure they have the AppContext, which
> they can then use to index ThreadGroup-specific things like EventQueues
> and LookAndFeels. ApplicationInstance stores the AppContext for each
> applet instance, so the correct type of AppContext can be returned by
> JNLPSecuritymanager when AppContext.getAppContext() calls it to find the
> current AppContext.
>
> I would greatly appreciate it if people can try this patch out. While I
> have tested with a large number of jnlp files and many applets, it could
> certainly use more testing.
>
> Any and all feedback is welcome!
>
> Thanks,
> Omair
>
> [1] http://icedtea.classpath.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=565

Anyone? Any comments?

Thanks,
Omair