Re: GUI toolkit for Ada again (Java with jgnat?)

[James Rogers <jimmaureenrogers@worldnet.att.net>]

Wolfgang Jeltsch wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> > [...]
> > JGrasp allows the user to select the look and feel he or she wants. No
> > matter which platform you are using, JGrasp lets you choose the Motif,
> > Windoze, or Java look and feel.
> 
> The problem is that Swing does not let a "native" library handle the GUI
> components. Instead it tries to imitate the choosen GUI style. I could
> image that this is not totally successful all the time.
> And if the native library is changed to provide a different look-and-feel
> every application will get this new one - except all those Java
> applications which will look different then.
> 

Every application will get a new look and feel only if they are
compiled with shared or dynamically linked libraries. Those compiled
with statically linked libraries will not be updated.

Historically, changing shared libraries does not always work as
cleanly as one would hope. The reason is that sometimes the changes
include changes in the interfaces to the subprograms in the
libraries. If such a change was made to the "native" libraries then
the existing applications could stop working altogether. 

For practical purposes it would be very difficult to change the
behavior of existing "native" libraries. There is too much user
inertia.

Jim Rogers
Colorado Springs, Colorado USA