[prog] Choice of cross-platform language and GUI toolkit / IDE

[Rachel McConnell]

Since I don't have experience with any Java GUI's (webapps only thus
far) it may be that I should shut up here :)  but I am AWARE of a
direction that you have not mentioned, which is IBM's Standard Widget
Toolkit (SWT) from their open-source Eclipse project.  Eclipse is,
depending on your preference, an IDE and/or an application base...
There is some rivalry between Sun and IBM over it as it rejects Swing
utterly.

SWT is not as easily cross-platform as Swing, b/c it does use native
widgets if they are available, which might be a show-stopper for you.
Here's (some of) what IBM has to say about it:

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-nativegui/
http://www.eclipse.org/articles/main.html (scroll down to the SWT
section)

and an overview of the Sun/IBM issues:

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-07-2002/jw-0705-iw-eclipse.html

HTH,
rachel

-----Original Message-----
From: programming-admin at linuxchix.org
[mailto:programming-admin at linuxchix.org] On Behalf Of Andrea Landaker
Subject: Re: [prog] Choice of cross-platform language and GUI toolkit /
IDE

<snip/>

Java will be slow, and it will use lots of memory (comparatively
speaking, of 
course), but it is definitely one of the easiest platforms to use 
cross-platform, since that's what it's made to do.  :-)  I've never
found 
Swing really easy to use, though -- it's kind of buggy.

<snip/>