This repository is a fork of the original SWT repository containing prototyping work on exchanging the adaptation of native, basic widgets with Swing widgets.
In the following, you find information about the current state of the prototype and how to try it out. Note that this prototype is currently not further developed.
To test the prototype, an Eclipse IDE has to be set up and the SWT projects from this repository have to be imported into it to start example applications.
Note that the Swing prototype is currently on tested on Windows and may not work on MacOS and Linux.
The easiest way to try this port is to import only the most basic plugins that you need into a clean workspace. In order to do that:
- Set up a recent Eclipse IDE for Committers (currently 2024-09 or newer including nightly builds), e.g.:
- Clone this repository and switch to the branch named
swing - Start the downloaded IDE and import the following projects:
- The SWT bundle
org.eclipse.swt - The Swing fragment
org.eclipse.swt.swing - Optional: For testing purposes
org.eclipse.swt.examplesand/ororg.eclipse.swt.snippets
- The SWT bundle
- Make sure that there are no plugins that are specific to your environment in the Target Platform (e.g. on Windows, disable every plugin/fragment that contains win32 in its name):
- Go to Window > Preferences and open Plug-in Development > Target Platform
- Double click the active target platform and open the Content tab
- Filter out the platform-specific plugins and fragments and disable all of them.
The resulting workspace should look something like this:
Starting with this, you can try out the SWT implementation with whatever application you want by also importing the according plug-ins into your workspace. The best starting point is the SWT ControlExample, a demo application containing all basic SWT widgets with configurability for most of their functionality, to see how the widgets look like and behave. It is also possible to start an Eclipse application based on Swing (see screenshots in the documentataion), but this is currently complicated to set up.
The ControlExample is part of the example project. It is placed in org.eclipse.swt.examples.controlexample. You can run this class as a Java application. Everything you see in this application is rendered with SWT using only Swing.
This one is an explorer that lets you discover each and every available snippet inside org.eclipse.swt.snippets, search through them, see their source code and (sometimes) even see a screenshot of them.
This snippet showcases some interesting features for graphics like anti-aliasing and more. Some other capabilities showcased here are still not functional though.
You can apply any Swing theme of your choice and it will be applied to the application. All you have to do is add the VM-argument -Dswt.swing.laf to the run configuration, e.g.:
-Dswt.swing.laf=com.sun.java.swing.plaf.motif.MotifLookAndFeelMore sophisticated third-party themes can also be used by just placing the JAR of that theme on the classpath and selecting the proper theme e.g. FlatLaf's Darcula theme:
-Dswt.swing.laf=com.formdev.flatlaf.FlatDarculaLafNote that this is work-in-progress prototyping work. The implementation is not (supposed to be) production ready. There are compile errors and it is, in particular, not easy to start an Eclipse application yet. Still, in the ControlExample you can experience every basic widget working.