JavaFX SWT and Swing-Interopt

[Tom Schindl]

Hi,

In one of our customers application we have major problems when
embedding JavaFX into SWT (but from my tests the situation is equal for
Swing).

In the end all windows (most commonly popup-windows) are affected
because they don't have a parent-window assigned and so they can be
hidden by the window embedding them - if the window opened is Modal like
eg the one from ColorPicker the JavaFX UI is also blocked.

To see what I mean just use this snippet below and do the following:
* Bring up the DropDown-List
* Bring up the custom color dialog
* Click somewhere in the JFrame

You notice the following:
* JavaFX Window is moved behind Swing-Window
* JavaFX UI is blocked

> package test;
> 
> import javax.swing.JFrame;
> 
> import javafx.application.Platform;
> import javafx.embed.swing.JFXPanel;
> import javafx.geometry.Pos;
> import javafx.scene.Scene;
> import javafx.scene.control.ColorPicker;
> import javafx.scene.layout.BorderPane;
> 
> public class TestSwingInterop extends JFrame {
> 	
> 	public TestSwingInterop() {
> 		setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
> 		final JFXPanel fxPanel = new JFXPanel();
>         add(fxPanel);
>         
>         Platform.runLater(new Runnable() {
>             @Override
>             public void run() {
>                 initFX(fxPanel);
>             }
>         });
> 	}
> 	
> 	private static void initFX(JFXPanel fxPanel) {
>         // This method is invoked on JavaFX thread
>         Scene scene = createScene();
>         fxPanel.setScene(scene);
>     }
> 	
> 	private static Scene createScene() {
> 		ColorPicker picker = new ColorPicker();
> 		BorderPane.setAlignment(picker, Pos.TOP_LEFT);
> 		BorderPane p = new BorderPane(picker);
> 		
> 		return new Scene(p);
> 	}
> 
> 	public static void main(String[] args) {
> 		TestSwingInterop s = new TestSwingInterop();
> 		s.setBounds(100, 100, 1000, 800);
> 		s.setVisible(true);
> 	}
> }


I've tested this on Java8 and Java9 but didn't had a chance to run it on
the latest master.

The problem is that the newly created JavaFX windows don't have the
Native-Window as their parent but the EmbeddedStage (who is not bound to
a native-window handle). It looks like EmbeddedStage has already been
prepared (see getRawHandle() : long) to support something like that in
future but com.sun.glass.ui.Window and its subclasses have never been
extend to create a window based on a pure long-pointer.

The only exception and the reason I guess the strategy would work was
used for Applets.

Before diving deeper into this I wanted to get a feedback from people
who know things better: Does the strategy of passing along the window
pointer (eg from SWT, don't know about Swing yet) to Glass and using it
as the parent pointer sound like a proper idea?

Tom

-- 
Tom Schindl, CTO
BestSolution.at EDV Systemhaus GmbH
Eduard-Bodem-Gasse 5-7. A-6020 Innsbruck
Reg. Nr. FN 222302s am Firmenbuchgericht Innsbruck