[5097] in java-interest
Re: yet another awt incompatibility
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan Locke)
Mon Jan 29 01:08:47 1996
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 1996 19:35:37 -0800 (PST)
From: Jonathan Locke <jonl@sealevelsoftware.com>
To: Jordan Hayes <jordan@Thinkbank.COM>
Cc: java-interest@java.sun.com
In-Reply-To: <199601281938.LAA15140@Thinkbank.COM>
On Sun, 28 Jan 1996, Jordan Hayes wrote:
> From jonl@sealevelsoftware.com Sun Jan 28 05:02:39 1996
>
> i would really like to see an alternative to AWT that uses
> lower-level primitives ...
>
> The problem with this is that people are accustomed to using a
> native widget set on a particular platform.
--------
sorry for the rather long-winded response, but i've got a lot on my mind
here... anyway, i hope you'll read this with an open mind (give it a fair
chance).
--------
i agree that this is a slight problem, but i just don't feel that the
intersection of the native widget sets on all platforms has all that much
to offer. java applets currently suffer from a lack of useful and
appealing widgets because AWT is a lowest-common-denominator abstraction.
what's more, the fact of the matter is that the ui's on different
platforms just don't work or look the same. i view this as a big
_disadvantage_. having a common widget set for java applets is very
appealing because i could use a java applet in the same way on any machine
i walk up to. if the real object here is to make the user's choice of
hardware and os irrelevant, then you don't want a lot of os dependencies
anyway (perhaps what i'm after is much further down the road...)
so the smart marketing thing to do would be to make a set of portable
widgets that look and feel like windows 95 (with some nice enhancements
from other platforms). legal battles (apple vs. microsoft) have set clear
precedents in this territory... and the market has clearly shown that the
windows ui is the (popularity) winner. i don't want to argue that windows
is necessarily better than all other os's, but it would be silly to ignore
the compelling and prevalent nature of it's UI from a marketing
standpoint. nearly *everyone* uses it! java should work like windows _if_
_only_ because it will help java to *win*. you do want that don't you? if
java's ui stagnates in second rate cross-platform wishy-washiness, users
will go elsewhere (blackbird or some equivalent perhaps) simply because
the ui is prettier and more full featured.
my understanding is that a while back, sun tried to make a windows
emulation layer (don't recall the name of it - WABI or something?). can't
have been to popular because i have never even heard of anyone using it.
seems to me that this is a *much* better chance to take that same territory.
it's technically feasible this time.
>
> i wouldn't have to own N machines to develop java applets
> ...
>
> I agree that bugfixes on the various native platforms should be a
> priority for the Java development team. But bugs will get fixed,
> whereas the Next Great UI will set us back years ...
yes, since AWT is a public thing it would be nice if it worked the same on
all platforms. but again, i disagree. UI components are just not that
hard to write ESPECIALLY in a good OO language like Java! sticking with
the lowest common denominator is what's going to set Java back by years...
where is the UI richness of a native Windows application? AWT has done
fine with basic things like buttons and edit controls and such because
they are easy. but it won't scale to the next step because the fancier
widgets on different platforms are too complex and vary too much. it's
going to take forever to get it to work right (and again you have to buy
all platforms to ensure that it does!) and worst of all, the results are
EASILY outclassed by native apps. where are my Java tree-view controls,
detachable toolbars, mini-captioned dialogs, tooltips, imagelists,
animation controls, tabbed dialogs, drag listboxes, checked listboxes,
progress bars, rich edit controls, status windows, sashes, trackbars,
up-down controls, header controls... etc etc? are we really going to AWT
all these things? i doubt it.
i predict that after AWT gets past the easy stuff (which it has partially
done), the more complex UI will prove *far* more difficult to do in native
widgets. not only that, it will take more time to do, it won't be
compelling and it won't work correctly. on the other hand, a *handful* of
very bright people could write all the controls listed above (using java,
this should take a matter of months), and in such a way that they work on
all platforms and DON'T HAVE TO BE PORTED TO EVERY NATIVE WIDGET SET
(slowing down the propagation of java and generating a big list of
incompatibilities, bugs and issues (inevitably)). such a class library
would be a (consistent, powerful, extensible, beautiful) platform all of
it's own. and we could move on to more interesting issues...
ideally there should be a java os abstraction layer to handle low level
graphics, hardware i/o and underlying filesystem(s). it should be put
into native code and forgotten about. then everything else should build
on top of this. i think java would get much further much more quickly
using this approach. at the base level, operating systems are much more
similar to one another than they are higher levels. and a java
'microkernel' architecture would make java and it's class libraries much
more portable (unlike what we have now with AWT).
J
>
> /jordan
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