JFXPanel

[Scott Palmer]

On 2012-12-24, at 10:06 AM, Artem Ananiev <artem.ananiev at oracle.com> wrote:

> 
> On 12/24/2012 6:25 PM, Scott Palmer wrote:
>> On 2012-12-24, at 5:18 AM, Anthony Petrov <anthony.petrov at oracle.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 12/21/2012 18:54, Scott Palmer wrote:
>>> ...
>>>> Anyway.. the blocking can be dealt with in the application code
>>>> if need be (make the Dialog modeless and block the panel via
>>>> other means).  It isn't even the issue.  It is the Window
>>>> hierarchy that is the issue.  Dialogs should never go behind
>>>> their parent window.  That's the only bug I would be trying to
>>>> address for now.
>>> 
>>> The only way to implement this reliably is to use the handle to the
>>> native Swing window as an owner for the FX dialog, which is not
>>> currently possible unfortunately.
>>> 
>>> I understand the need for this completely. However, I doubt this
>>> possibility would be useful for FX in the long run, especially
>>> given that workarounds exist.
>> 
>> What is the workaround for file choosers?  The swing version crashes
>> the JVM on windows when you try to sort in details view - a major bug
>> that our testers are very unhappy about.
> 
> What is the bug number, where the crash is described?

Originally filed as 7160713, again as 7177373, repeated as 7199708... but it is finally fixed in 7u12 anyway. (Too late for me to ship with it.)
It was present in all java 7 builds until 7u12.  We finally just recently spent days hacking JavaFX file choosers to work reasonably in a Swing app... keeping them in front, blocking the main window etc.  It was far more work than it should have been, and there are still corner cases that fail, but at least it doesn't bring down the whole app.

> 
>> Tool tips?  ColorPicker? Context menus? Any popup window...  There
>> are several issues with these not going away when they should or
>> going behind the parent window.
> 
> Have you tried the latest 8 builds? The fix for RT-24632 should address popup windows. It was not backported to 2.2.x

8 is too far out.  I could try, but since I can't ship with it for some time it isn't on the radar.

> 
>> The workaround is don't use JavaFX, which sort of makes migration of
>> Swing apps an all or nothing deal.  When we hit these issues during
>> piece-wise migration it becomes a bit scarier to commit to the full
>> migration.
>> 
>> I suspect the parent window issue is the root of a lot of JFXPanel
>> problems.  If JAWT can be used to get a proper parent window for the
>> Scene I'm hoping it will go a long way.  If enough of the toolkit
>> code is open source I would consider attempting a patch myself.
> 
> I provided comments about JAWT in previous emails. I don't say it's not a solution, I say it requires much more code to work reliably than one can expect.

That's too bad :-(.

A back port of the popup fixes to 2.2.x (7u12?) would be awesome.

Cheers,

Scott 

> 
>>> For example, you could use a Swing modal dialog to achieve the same
>>> result - just put your modal FX content into another JFXPanel and
>>> embed it into the JDialog.
>> 
>> That is the approach we are going with for now.
>> 
>>> Or, as you're suggesting above, you could disable the panel
>>> manually which wouldn't fix the z-order but at least would provide
>>> some kind of modality.
>> 
>> We don't have a problem with modality at the moment.
>> 
>>> A third approach is to get rid of the JFXPanel altogether and put
>>> your FX content into a real FX top-level window.
>> 
>> In other words a full JavaFX app without Swing... this is what we are
>> working towards.
>> 
>> Happy holidays,
> 
> Merry Cristmas and Happy New Year :)
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Artem
> 
>> Scott >
>>> 
>>> --
>>> best regards,
>>> Anthony
>>> 
>>>> Scott
>>>> On 2012-12-21, at 8:09 AM, Anthony Petrov <anthony.petrov at oracle.com> wrote:
>>>>> It isn't obvious to me, however. Suppose I add several JFXPanels into a single Swing top-level window. I may want to show a modal dialog for the first JFXPanel, but leave others operable, for example. This use case seems to be quite valid.
>>>>> 
>>>>> --
>>>>> best regards,
>>>>> Anthony
>>>>> 
>>>>> On 12/21/2012 16:09, Scott Palmer wrote:
>>>>>> The whole Swing window must be blocked, if possible.  I don't even understand why this is a question.  If I show a JOptionPane and I give a JPanel as the "parent" component, does it block only the JPanel?  This is no different.  Can you give me an example of when you would only want the JFXPanel blocked?
>>>>>> Scott
>>>>>> On 2012-12-21, at 4:52 AM, Anthony Petrov <anthony.petrov at oracle.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> Hi Scott,
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I think that technically this could be implemented.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> However, there's a problem: when you create a modal FX dialog specifying a JFXPanel instance as its owner - should the whole Swing window be blocked while the dialog is showing, or should the JFXPanel be disabled only? Why?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> From logical perspective there's not a perfect answer to the above question. No matter what decision we make, some people could get upset.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> best regards,
>>>>>>> Anthony
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On 12/21/2012 7:00, Scott Palmer wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 2012-12-17, at 5:55 AM, Artem Ananiev <artem.ananiev at oracle.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On 12/14/2012 8:19 PM, Werner Lehmann wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> Scott,
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> JFXPanel has quite a few issues (look for JFXPanel or Swing in Jira).
>>>>>>>>>> Among those is the filechooser problem. It is probably just one instance
>>>>>>>>>> of the problem that a JavaFX stage cannot be modal or on top of Swing
>>>>>>>>>> windows.
>>>>>>>>> Yes, z-order and modality problems with Swing and FX top-level windows is a known issue. Unfortunately, I don't know a good way to fix it: AWT/Swing doesn't expose enough information to use its windows as owner windows for other UI toolkits.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Artem
>>>>>>>> I responded earlier wondering why the native window handle of the Swing Window wasn't acquired via the publicly available jawt native methods so it could be used as the parent for a Stage or worked into some sort of hierarchy to give a proper parent window to FX Stages and dialogs.   I didn't see any response.  Am I missing something?
>>>>>>>> I already do this (get and use the native window handle) in a Swing app so that I can blit live video into my Swing app., a high-end video capture/transcoder/broadcast application. (See http://www.digitalrapids.com/en/Products/StreamZHD.aspx or the one that really could have used FX if it was ready earlier http://www.digitalrapids.com/en/Products/TouchStream.aspx)
>>>>>>>> I actually have a need to do the same with a JavaFX app .. but there is no equivalent in FX land for the jawt JNI methods. (I asked for this years ago in the Java FX 1.0 days.)
>>>>>>>> Is all of the code involved in JFXPanel->Scene->Window Open Source?  I went poking around but didn't find the implementation of com.sun.javafx.tk.quantum.QuantumToolkit which I think is used to create the peer of the EmbeddedWindow used as the Window for JFXPanels.
>>>>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>>>>> Scott