Posted by ul on Dec 06, 2013; 2:42am
URL: https://forum.jogamp.org/Jogl-and-SWT-tp4030775p4030791.html

Thank you.

If I have the basics right AWT and SWT are widget toolkits. The main differences are that AWT is core Java whereas SWT is part of the Eclipse infrasstructure, and that AWT draws its own widgets whereas SWT utilizes native widgets if available. Swing and JFace are UI toolkits on top of AWT and SWT respectively.

There's also the new Java GUI technology called JavaFX and that would've been my first choise had it only supported OpenGL. I know JavaFX has a 3D module which probably is just old Java3D in disguise. And I have a problem with Java3D because it really never got beyond the "proof of concept" phase so I would like a fallback to OpenGL but it's not supported by JavaFX and most likely never will as it seems.

So appearantly it boils down to either Swing/AWT or Jface/SWT.

Now my beef with Swing is  that from what I've heard it has been deprecated (or at least put in a dark corner) in favour of JavaFX. JFace/SWT on the other hand will stay fully supported and current since it's the cornerstone of Eclipse. For this reason it seems like a better choise.

On yet another hand I would like a good 3D render and jMonkeyEngine seems an appealing choise since it's shader based. I get the impression though that the jMonkeyEngine developers may favour Swing/AWT,

http://hub.jmonkeyengine.org/wiki/doku.php/sdk:whynoteclipse

This link states they prefer the Netbeans IDE over the Eclipse IDE but it gives me the feeling it may spill over to also mean they favour Swing/AWT over JFace/SWT and that the former therefore would be better supported.

Well, since both Jogl and jMonkeyEngine seem to favour Swing/AWT I'll reconsider using it. Is this a free fantasy I'm having or may there be something to it? Finally I'm not quite sure how Newt enters the picture but since it seems to exist both for AWT and SWT it probably doesn't matter at this stage of my decision process.