Posted by Alexis Drogoul on Oct 04, 2021; 12:24pm
URL: https://forum.jogamp.org/JOGL-does-not-work-on-versions-higher-than-eclipse-2021-03-tp4041328p4041348.html

Hi,

First report on the use of the NEWTCanvasSWT for replacing the GLCanvas provided by JOGL in the GAMA platform. It is a mixed bag, probably mostly because I did not yet completely grasp the logic of NEWT surfaces and their interaction with SWT and also because I did it on my spare time this WE.

Pros:
1) With a minimal effort, I have obtained a working version that displays OpenGL contents in the same conditions as previously (no weird artefacts, no distorsion, ..). Nothing seems to be requiring to be updated in the renderer and the various GL-related operations. A good point !
2) The opening of the views is way faster than with a GLCanvas. I havent measured it yet, but what used to take 4-5 seconds (for instance, opening 4 GL views side by side) now takes less than 1. Nothing scientific, but the feeling is great.
3) The stability of the couple SWT-JOGL has considerably improved (and it works well in an Eclipse 2021-09 environment). Idem for the stability w.r.t. JDK. Everything runs now smoothly under JDK 17, while GLCanvas would regularly break in at least 3 different places (vertical resizing of the window, mix of Java2D and OpenGL displays, refreshing of the display itself).

On the cons side, however, we have what appears (for the moment) blocking points for an immediate adoption:

1) When a KeyListener is attached to the Newt surface, it seems to grab all the keystrokes, even if the view doesn't have focus (or maybe it grabs the focus as well ?); the various key listeners installed in other SWT views do not receive anything more. Has anyone experienced it also?
2) Changing perspective does not hide the NEWT surfaces of the views present in the previous perspective. They still appear above the views of the new perspective (and actually prevent the perpective to correctly change). How do you deal with such behaviour? Anything special to do? How do you "hide" a NEWT view (and come back to it after) ?
3) Fullscreen is handled in GAMA as a Shell taking up the whole surface of the screen, on which the "zoomed" display is reparented. Reparenting a GLCanvas was easy, but reparenting the Composite that holds the NEWTCanvasSWT does not seem to work. Is is possible to do this? Setting the Window to fullscreen is not an option here because, in fullscreen operations, users can still benefit from the toolbar, an interactive console or different other SWT/JFace components in side views.

So, mixed feeling here. The transition has been incredibly smooth for the main part (GL display, etc.) but promises to be a bit rough now...

Any help or comment appreciated ! Thanks in advance :)

Best regards,
Alexis