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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!metro!metro!seagoon.newcastle.edu.au!brushtail.hna.com.au!dinsdale!matt From: matt@dinsdale.hna.com.au (Matt McLeod) Subject: Re: JDK for FreeBSD Organization: Hunter Network Association, Australia Message-ID: <E2nALz.tn@dinsdale.hna.com.au> References: <32AD41AC.41C67EA6@telusplanet.net> <591p59$3ph@hamilton.maths.tcd.ie> <32B6152F.79AF@ica.net> Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 05:15:35 GMT Lines: 33 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:32807 In article <32B6152F.79AF@ica.net>, Lisa Ing <lisa.ing@ica.net> wrote: >David Malone wrote: >> Does JDK manipulate X-Windows as it GUI? > >Java libraries are suppose to be independent of the >machine that you are running, but I cannot see how >it can be if it must call Windows libraries on >MS-Dos machines and X-windows libraries on Unix >machines. >Does Java have its own GUI then? My understanding of this is a little hazy, but I'm sure I'll be corrected if I make any mistakes... Java applications (and applets) use AWT - which provides the interface to the windowing system for the programmer. To support a new platform, the AWT runtime has to be ported (perhaps as part of the VM?). But the programmer doesn't (or shouldn't) have to worry about this. They just use AWT (or one of the other toolkits available that sit on top of AWT), and AWT deals with the rest. In this way, a Java application using AWT can present much the same UI (with some differences - AWT doesn't draw the widgets or anything, it just uses the widgets provided by the windowing system [or widget library], so the appearance will be different between platforms) on X/Motif, Windows, Presentation Manager, Mac, or anything else anyone chose to port the runtime to (e.g., someone might choose to do a version that talks to GGI or svgalib on Linux, or use a different set of widgets). This is one of the things I like most about Java. I'm never satisfied with any platform (for personal use), so it's nice to be able to take my work with me to pretty much any platform with little or no extra effort required.