Java™ Application Development on Linux - Dator

398Chapter 17Other Ways: Alternatives to Swing$ gcj -classpath=~/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.swt/swt.jar:\~/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.swt/swt-pi.jar -c HelloWorld.java$ gcj -main=HelloWorld -o HelloWorld Hello.o swt.so$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=.:~/eclipse:\~/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.swt/ws/gtk$ ./HelloWorldEt voilà! You have the HelloWorld application! Again. But now it is anexecutable binary. Enjoy.17.5REVIEWCompared to Swing, SWT is a somewhat simpler GUI library. Unlike Swing,it is Free Software and Open Source. It provides a full GUI library for use withgcj. It is part of the Eclipse project. It uses native methods that require calls todispose of allocated objects. It has a rigid hierarchy that requires that lowerlevel GUI components be linked to their parents when they are constructed.This means there are some limitations on how applications may be constructed.SWT is much less commonly used than Swing. Swing is the lingua franca ofJava GUIs. SWT is definitely worth knowing, but if you want your skills to bemarketable, it is probably best to start with Swing.17.6WHAT YOU STILL DON’T KNOWWe just scratched the surface of SWT Widgets. There are a bunch we haven’tcovered.17.7RESOURCES• SWT was written to support the Eclipse IDE. Eclipse is athttp://www.eclipse.org/.• An introduction to SWT can be found at the same site:http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-SWT-Design-1/SWT-Design-1.html.• Part 2 of the same article is at http://www.eclipse.org/articles/swt-design-2/swt-design-2.html.