AWT, SWT, Swing: Java GUI Clean Up (1) [翻]
原文：
http://blogs.sun.com/Swing/entry/awt_swt_swing_java_gui 作者：williamchen 译者：Matthew Chen 备注：本文是翻译，由于部分文本网上有提供，就直接使用了。作者的初稿，不是很规范的英文，但是内容值得一读，所以翻译了出来，一系列共有四篇，红字为译者评论。
Overview概述
Java GUI toolkits have always been a controversial topic. The same type of debates also happened in other languages such as Smalltalk. In fact there exist such debates on every platform-independent language. It is especially prominent in Java because Java is the most dominating language today. Java GUI 工具包一直是一个倍受争议的话题。同样的争论也发生在其他编程语言如Smalltalk。实际上每个平台无关的语言都存在着这样的争论。Java作为当前最受广泛使用的编程语言而尤为突出。 So what’s the controversy? Basically, it is a dispute between people who support emulated components(or widgets, or controls) and those who support native components. There are two camps among Java developers, one of which advocates for emulated components as in Swing, and the other native components as in SWT. 这场争论在支持模拟组件(如widgets和control，在下文中也称之为仿造组件)和支持本地组件(在下文中也称之为原生组件)的人们之间展开，于是Java开发者形成了两个不同的阵营，提倡使用模拟组件的Swing，和提倡使用原生组件的SWT。[战争从来都在相似的人们之间展开，因为它们想要一个东西]
History历史
There are many stories about around the dispute on the Internet. You should probably have already heard of them. One of them can help you to understand the whole picture. Let’s start with this one, in which Amy Fowler from Swing team is one of the protagonists. Internet上有许多围绕这一争论的故事。你可能已经听说过它们中的大多数了，其中之一有助于让你理清头绪，让我们就从这里开始，Amy Fowler是Swing阵营的一个倡导者。 Back in 1990s, there were three companies, which developed their products using Smalltalk. They are IBM, Digital Talk and Parc-Place. IBM and Digital Talk adopted native components, while Parc-Place believed that emulation is the way to go. At the very beginning, all things went well until IBM overtook the others. The other two then merged to form a new company named Objectshare. Then a huge battle erupted when they tried to merge their products into one. The native and emulated crowd fought the battle nearly to death. When Amy Fowler from Parc-place, who insisted on emulated components, finally won the victory, IBM had got all of their accounts, because the two companies did nothing but quarrel for an entire year. The share price of the company, went down to under 1 dollar a share and were pulled from NASDAQ because of incorrect financial reportings.
回到上个世纪90年代，曾几何时有3家庞大的Smalltalk公司——IBM、Parc-Place和 Digitalk。在90年代初期3家公司的市场份额大致相等，生活是美好的。Parc-Place采用仿窗口部件（emulated widgets）的设计（即Swing的设计），IBM和Digitalk则采用原生窗口部件（native widgets）。后来IBM压倒了另外两家，因此他们打算合并成一家，假设叫做Parc-Place Digitalk。随后当他们试图将他们的产品融合到一个叫做Jigsaw的计划中时爆发了一场大战，计划由于政治原因失败了（开发人员实际上已经能让它运转起来），就因为原生和仿造两派的死战。Amy赢得了精神上的胜利，不
过IBM赢得了他们所有的生意，因为这两家公司在一整年里除了吵架什么都没做。当尘埃落定之后PPD（Parc-Place Digitalk当时已改名为Objectshare，跟Windscale改名为Sellafield的原因相同——让人们淡忘之前发生的灾难）的股票价格从60美元掉到了低于1美元1股。他们因为伪报收入被NASDAQ摘牌，从此消失。
At that time, AWT had just existed. Sun had built a basic set of portable control classes that mapped to native components on the different operating systems. However AWT was very buggy. It was beyond belief this was just poor code that could be fixed. Just then, Amy was hired by Sun, and she promised to solve all of the problems by doing a lightweight solution. Convinced, Sun management to make her the head of the GUI development. Amy then hired all her old Parc-Place friends and they set about creating Swing. 当时，AWT已经出现了。SUN当时已经建立了一套基本的可移植控件类，这些类映射到不同操作系统上的原生窗口组件（native widget），当时的AWT还满是漏洞，远不能称为可靠，还需要SUN的coder们去修补。然后Amy被雇佣了，她承诺通过轻量级方案解决所有窗口组件的问题，以此说服SUN管理层让她当了GUI开发部门的头头。随后Amy雇佣了所有她过去在Parc-Place的旧朋友，让他们来开发Swing。[不知道Amy是不是理想主义者，但我是，从我选择Java那天起] In IBM, Visual Age for Java were first written in Smalltalk, which used native components. Then they started to migrate them to a Java code. All of the IBM developers are the those Smalltalk guy, and they hated Swing for its emulated nature. They reluctantly built it using Swing. At that time, it is of no doubt that Swing was ugly, slow and buggy. Therefore they created a project to migrate the Smalltalk native components over to Java. This toolkit was later called SWT, which initially means Simple Widget Toolkit and later Standard Widget Toolkit. It was a success as they released a product called Visual Age Micro Edition. The folks later found that there were bugs in Swing reading windows events, which could cause memory leaks. So they took the decision that SWT and AWT/Swing should not co-exist and then put the toolkit into Eclipse which is a tools platform derived from the early Visual Age. 在IBM，VisualAge for Java最初是用Smalltalk（用的是原生窗口组件）写的，当将这些工具向Java代码库迁移时，他们需要一套窗口组件。IBM这边的开发人员都是原来搞Smalltalk的那一批人，他们对管理层要求用Swing来构建WebSphere Studio工具都非常不情愿。“Swing是个可怕的充满缺陷的怪兽“。因此开始了一个新的项目，把他们的Smalltalk原生窗口组件移植到Java上去。这个工具集后来被成为SWT，S开始是Simple的缩写，不过后来变成了Standard的缩写。这个项目获得了成功，被运用在发布的 VisualAge Micro Edition产品中。他们当时发现在Swing读事件队列的时候用了一种可能留下内存漏洞的方式，而不得不采用他们自己的查询 Windows事件队列的循环，以纠正这个错误。这促成了他们关于SWT和 AWT/Swing不能共存的决定。他们把这个工具包放到了Eclipse中，这是一个来自于早期Visual Age的工具平台。
The above story should have given you an overview of the history of the three, especially SWT. Now you might think, the reason IBM did to create SWT was valid and Swing should follow the way SWT has been on. Actually this opinion is very superficial. When you dwell upon to the nature of Java, you will find that it is not that simple as you expect. 你应该已经从上述的故事中对三者的历史有了大概的了解，尤其是SWT。现在你也许会觉得，IBM创建SWT的理由是合理的而Swing应该沿用SWT采用的方式。这样的观点是片面的，当你深入了解到Java的本质之后，你会发现其实并不像你想象的那么简单。
Prerequisite先决条件
What is the essential feature of Java, which has influenced the decision in the toolkit design? Or what is the prerequisite of a java GUI toolkit? 什么才是Java本质的，影响到工具集设计的特征呢？或者说，什么才是Java GUI工具集设计的先决条件呢？ The answer comes from one of Sun's promises about Java, write once, run anywhere. It is one of the java's advantages over other languages. Before Java was created, software portability was a nightmare especially to those who wanted to support multiple platforms. It is especially true in modern days when the Internet is so popular. People from different parts of the world are working on different platforms. And it is very common for a software vendor to support multiple operating systems. Java’s write-once-run-anywhere promise was obvious a relief to developers. It can greatly improve software development productivity.
答案来自于Sun对Java的承诺之一：write once, run anywhere（一次编写，随处运行）。这是Java不同于其他语言的优势所在。在Java被创建之前，软件的跨平台性能是开发者，特别是那些希望对多平台提供支持的开发者的梦魇。在当今的生活中Internet的使用已经相当的普遍了，在世界不同角落的人们在不同的平台上工作着。软件提供商为不同的操作系统提供支持是再平凡不过的事情。Java的write-once-run-anywhere（WORA）承诺显然减轻了开发者的负担，极大地提高了软件开发的生产力。
However to write a portable applications, you should use those standard libraries, which provide platform-independent APIs. These standard libraries include language support, common utilities, networking, I/O and GUI toolkit, etc. So when Sun started to design the GUI toolkit, the first thing it should consider is a well-designed platform-independent API. AWT and Swing were designed carefully in such a way to avoid platform incompatibility. SWT on the contrary was initially designed without this portability in mind. It was first designed for an IDE, Visual Age for Java. And at that time, it seemed that Windows was their first priority. Therefore SWT API is more akin those of Windows. In general SWT is not as portable as Swing. Although Steve Northover, the father of SWT, argued that SWT is platform independent, you can easily find many Windows API inheritances. 然而编写跨平台的应用程序，你必须使用支持平台无关性的标准库。这些标准库包括语言支持，公共用途，网络，I/O和GUI工具集等。所以当Sun开始设计GUI工具集的时候，首要任务就是考虑一个设计良好的平台无关的API。AWT和Swing都被小心地设计以保证平台兼容性。SWT则相反，它在设计之初并不以扩展性为原则，它为一个专有的IDE Visual Age for Java而设计，Windows作为这个IDE的首选运行环境拥有很高的优先级考量。SWT API类似于WIndows，通常它并不如Swing的扩展性好，尽管Steve Northover，SWT之父，辩称SWT是平台无关的，你可以很容易地发现许多Windows API的痕迹。[Windows API的痕迹，并不是一个程序的问题，却是一个跨平台程序的问题，因为多数用linux或mac的人，对Windows上能提供的东西并不感兴趣。]
Differences区别
GUI application is one of the major types of softwares. So Java GUI library should be standardized and integrated into the JRE platform. However different operating systems have different GUI styles and component sets. There are some components which exist on all the platforms and have similar look and feels. These common components such as button, label, textfield, checkbox, etc are also called standard components. Different gui toolkits provide different set of components. Same component from different toolkits may have different look and feel. GUI toolkit usually follows different principle when choosing component types and features to implement. When examining a gui toolkit, we generally have two different levels of concerns. One is component types, the other is component features. GUI应用程序是软件的一种主要类型，所以Java的GUI库应该是标准化并被集成到JRE平台中的。然而不同的操作系统有不同的GUi风格和组件集。有一些组件在所以平台上有相似的观感。这些共有组件如按钮，标签，文本域，单选框等被称为标准组件。不同的GUI工具集提供了不同的组件集。GUI工具集总是遵循不同的原则来选择组件类型和特征以实现。考察一个工具集，有两个不同的要素：组件类型和组件特征。
Terms
First let me illustrate two mathematical concepts to you: LCD and . LCD means least common denominator. means greatest common denominator. Look at the figure below. There are three different sets standing for different Oses. The intersecting part is LCD of the three, while the union is of the three.
首先让我图解两个数学概念：最大公约数和最小公倍数。如下图，三个集合代表不同的操作系统。相交的部分是最大公约数，合并的部分是最小公倍数。
Component Types and Features组件类型和特征
Now let’s examine the component types and features of the three Java GUI toolkits, AWT, SWT and Swing. 现在让我们来考察Java GUI工具集AWT，SWT和Swing的组件类型和特征
AWT
AWT component set complies LCD principle, which means AWT only has the common set of components which exist on all platforms. So you cannot find advanced components such as table or tree in AWT, because these components are not supported on some other platforms. As to feature set per component, AWT complies LCD too. It can only support those features available from all platforms. For example, AWT buttons is not able to be attached with an icon, because on Motif platform, button is not supposed to have an icon. AWT组件集遵循最大公约数原则，即AWT只拥有所有平台上都存在的组件的公有集合。所以你在AWT中无法获取如表或树等高级组件，因为它们在某些平台上不支持。AWT的组件特征同样遵循这一原则。它只提高平台上公有的特征。例如AWT按钮不能附着图片，因为在Motif平台上，按钮是不支持图片的。 Since its poor component and feature support, AWT did not attract developers much. And it is deprecated by Sun. It is only there to ensure backward compatibility and support Swing. 由于它低劣的组件集和特征，AWT无法吸引开发者。它是Sun不推荐使用的，只是为了确保向下兼容和支持Swing。
SWT
One of SWT’s initial goal is to provide a more rich component set than AWT. It adopts (greatest common denominator) principle to provide a union set of components that appear on every platform. The idea is that if a component type exists on the platform, then SWT will encapsulate it using java code and JNI call. If a component does not exist on the platform, it then emulates the component by extending and drawing a Composite. A SWT Composite is similar to AWT Canvas. By this way, SWT provides a richer component set than AWT. It is worth to point out that SWT JNI wrapper is different from AWT. Its emulation is also different from Swing. SWT最初的目标之一是为了提供比AWT更为丰富的组件集。它遵循最小公倍数原则以提供一个各个平台上包含的组件的并集。思路是如果一个组件在某个平台上包含，那么SWT就会包装它并用java代码和JNI来调用它。如果一个组件在某一平台上不存在，它就会用继承并绘制Composite的方式来模拟组件。一个SWT Composite类似于AWT的Canvas。以这种方式，SWT提供了较AWT更为丰富的组件集。值得指出的是SWT的JNI封装不同于AWT，它的模拟也不同于Swing。
As to component feature set, SWT is similar to AWT. They complies to LCD. In early SWT versions, SWT button did not support icon attachment for the same reason as AWT. But later, many of those missing features were made up using emulations. But still, there are features which cannot be implemented purely by emulation. SWT has its components completely controlled native operating system. It is hard to extend. Only features like some graphic decoration can customized by emulating. So strictly speaking, SWT component feature set can not be as rich as Swing due to its difficult to extend.
在组件特征方面，SWT类似于AWT。它遵循最大公约数原则。在早期的SWT版本中，SWT按钮因为和AWT同样的原因不支持附着图片。在之后的版本中，许多缺失的特征采用模拟的方式补全。但仍有许多特征无法采用纯粹的模拟实现。SWT将组件的控制交给本地操作系统。它难以扩展。只有例如图形装饰等特征可以借助模拟绘制来自定义实现。所以严格意义上将，SWT组件的组件集和特征因其难于扩展而不如Swing来得丰富。
Swing
Swing is the most powerful and flexible of the three. With respect to component types, Swing complies to greatest common denominator. Because Swing controls all of the GUI system and it is very extensible and flexible, Swing can almost create any component you could imagine. The only limitation of Swing is its AWT containers. In Swing you still can not implement real transparent or irregular-shaped windows, because Swing depends on those AWT top containers including Applet, Window, Frame and Dialog etc. Except these niches, Swing has implemented almost all the standard components on every platform. Swing是三者中最强大和灵活的。在组件类型上，它遵循最小公约数原则。由于Swing可以控制自身GUI系统的全部并有很好的可扩展和灵活性，它几乎可以创建所有你想象得到的组件。唯一的限制是它的AWT容器。在Swing中你还不能跨平台地实现真正的透明化和不规则矩形窗口，因为Swing依赖于AWT顶层容器例如Applet, Window, Frame and Dialog等。除此之外，Swing几乎实现了所有平台上的标准组件。[都说Java7中能够实现，也有一些迹象看来接近，期待吧] As to component feature set, Swing complies to greatest common denominator. It has most of the component features available on every platform. What's more, you can extend the existing Swing components and add more features to them. 在组件特征上，Swing遵循最小公倍数原则。它拥有所有平台上可提供的组件特征。不仅如此，你还可以继承已有的Swing组件并添加新的特性。 AWT, SWT, Swing: Java GUI Clean Up (2)[翻] Posted on 2007-11-29 08:20 Matthew Chen 阅读(401) 评论(0) 编辑 收藏 所属分类: Java SE
原文：http://blogs.sun.com/Swing/entry/awt_swt_swing_java_gui1 作者：williamchen 译者：Matthew Chen 备注：本文是四篇文章中的第二。
Implementations
The above comparison is mainly conducted in API level. Let's continue the comparison with focus on implementation details. In all the difference between Swing and SWT/AWT is that Swing is purely implemented in Java, while SWT and AWT is a mixture of Java and JNI. Of course, their target is same, to provide a cross-platform APIs. However to achieve this, SWT and AWT has to sacrifice some components and some features so that they can provide a universal APIs. 上一篇的比较主要是在API级别上的。让我们将比较的焦点转移到实现细节上。Swing和SWT/AWT的区别是Swing是纯Java实现，而SWT和AWT是Java和JNI的混合。当然，它们的目标都是相同的，提供一个跨平台的APIs。然而为了达到这一点，SWT和AWT不得不牺牲一些组件和特性以提供一个通用的APIs。
AWT
An AWT component is usually a component class which holds a reference with a peer interface type. This reference points to a native peer implementation. Take java.awt.Label for example, its peer interface is LabelPeer. LabelPeer is platform independent. On every platform, AWT provides different peer class which implements LabelPeer. On Windows, the peer class is WlabelPeer, which implement label functionalities by JNI calls. These JNI methods are coded in C or C++. They do the actual work, interacting with a native label. Let's look at the figure. You can see that AWT components provide a universal public API to the application by AWT component class and AWT peers. A component class and its peer interface are identical across platform. Those underlying peer classes and JNI codes are different. 一个AWT组件通常是一个包含了对等体接口类型引用的组件类。这个引用指向本地对等体实现。举java.awt.Label为例，它的对等体接口是LabelPeer。LabelPeer是平台无关的。在不同平台上，AWT提供不同的对等体类来实现LabelPeer。在Windows上，对等体类是WlabelPeer，它调用JNI来实现label的功能。这些JNI方法用C或C++编写。它们关联一个本地的label，真正的行为都在这里发生。作为整体，AWT组件由AWT组件类和AWT对等体提供了一个全局公用的API给应用程序使用。一个组件类和它的对等体接口是平台无关的。底层的对等体类和JNI代码是平台相关的。
SWT
SWT implementation also utilize JNI methodology. But the detail is different from that of AWT. SWT evangelists often became furious when they heard people describing SWT as another AWT. Steve Northover, the father of SWT, once complained about this. SWT也使用JNI的方法论来实现。但细节不同于AWT。SWT的拥护者听到人们拿SWT和AWT相提并论可是会很生气的，Steve Northover，SWT之父，就曾为此抱怨过。 Yes, they are different. Let's delve into SWT code. In SWT, the only identical part on every platform is the component interface. That is class and method definition signature. All the underlying codes are different from platform to platform. SWT provides an OS class for every platform. This class encapsulates many native APIs by JNI methods. And then SWT component class glues these JNI method together to provide a meaning functionality. 没错，它们是不同的。让我们深究SWT的代码。在SWT中，各个平台上唯一相同的部分是组件的接口，是类和方法的定义签名。所有的底层代码都是平台差异的。SWT为每个平台提供了OS类。这个类用JNI封装了许多本地APIs。SWT组件类通过把这些JNI方法黏合在一起提供一个有意义的功能。
For example, on Windows, text field selection can be conducted by only one system call. This system call is implemented in the Windows OS class as an native method. So there is only one JNI call in the setSelection method of Text on Windows. 例如，在Windows上，文本域的选择是由一个系统调用处理的。这个系统调用在Windows的OS类中作为一个本地方法实现。所以在Windows平台的Text的setSelection方法中只用到了一个JNI调用。 However, on motif platform, text selection involves two native calls. Again SWT implements these two calls in the motif OS class. So the component class on motif needs to call these two calls to achieve text selection. 然而，在motif上，文本域的选择包含两个本地调用。SWT就在motif的OS类中实现了两个调用。所以在motif上组件类需要作两次调用来实现文本的选择。
By now, you can see the major difference between SWT and AWT is that they use different peer code to wipe out the differences. SWT uses java code, or java peer to glue system calls implemented by JNI. However, AWT put these code in native peers, which complicates the situation. I think SWT's method is more clever. 现在你应该能看出SWT和AWT的最大不同了，它们使用了不同的对等体编程方式来消除平台差异。SWT用java代码或有JNI实现的java对等体来黏合系统调用。而AWT把代码包含在对等体中，使情况复杂化了，我个人觉得SWT的方法更加明智。[是否我翻译有问题，因为我并不觉得是这样更明智，SWT的无则模拟是不必要的，这是使用者才去做的事，SWT作为提供者应该无则C++实现，当然实现的是最核心的高度复用的又或者需要极大性能支持的，毕竟带了动态链接库，索性多放点东西。]
Swing
When it comes to Swing, everything becomes clear and straight forward. Except the top containers, Swing implementation depends on nothing of individual platform. It has all the controls and resources. What Swing needs is event inputs to drive the system, and graphics, fonts and colors which are inherited from the top AWT containers. Ordinary Swing components can be seen as a logical area on AWT containers. They do not have a peer registered. All swing components added to a same top container share its AWT peer to acquire system resources, such as font, graphics etc. Swing has its own component data structure stored in JVM space. It manages drawing process, event dispatching and component layout totally by itself.
到了Swing这里，一切就变得清晰和直接了。除了顶层容器，Swing的实现不依赖于具体平台。它掌管了所有的控制和资源。Swing所需要的是事件输入来驱动系统，以及承接自顶层AWT容器的图形处理，字体和颜色。普通的Swing组
件可以看作是AWT容器的一块逻辑区域。它们并没有注册对等体。所有添加到同一顶层容器的Swing组件共享它的AWT对等体以获取系统资源，如字体，图形处理等。Swing将组件自己的数据结构存储在JVM的空间中。它完全由自己管理画图处理，事件分发和组件布局。
Resource Management
Because both AWT and SWT holds reference to native components, they must release them in a correct manner to avoid memory leaks and JVM crashes. AWT takes most of the resource management task to the system, relieving developers from tedious resource management. However this complicates the AWT implementation. Once it is implemented, developers has less opportunities to make errors and crash their applications. 由于AWT和SWT都持有对本地组件的引用，它们必须以正确的方式释放这些引用以避免内存泄露和JVM崩溃。AWT将绝大多数资源管理任务交给系统，将开发者从单调乏味的资源管理中解救出来。然而这使得AWT的实现复杂化了。一旦它实现了，开发者很少有机会犯错误并使他们的程序崩溃。 SWT follows another way. In essence, SWT let the developers to manage those resources by themselves. There's a famous rule there. That is those who create the component should release it as well. Thus developers have to explicitly and carefully call the dispose method on every component or resource he has created. This greatly simplifies the SWT implementation model. But it puts the developers at the risk that they might easily crash their applications due to incorrect coding. SWT用的是另一种方法。大体上，SWT让开发者自己来管理资源。它的一条著名的规则是：谁创建，谁释放。因此开发者必须谨慎地显式调用dispose方法释放每一个由他创建的组件和资源。这简化了SWT的实现模型，但把开发者摆在了因错误编码而易于造成程序崩溃这一风险之上。
Emulation difference模拟方式的区别
Both Swing and SWT uses emulation in their implementation. SWT emulate those components which are missing from one platform. The difference is that SWT's emulation is much more like those of AWT Canvas. SWT has a Composite class which has a counterpart peer in the operating system. It gets all the resources it needs such as graphics object, font or color from its own peer. It gets all the events directly from the operating systems process it. However, swing component does not have a counterpart peer. It is only
logical area of the top container. The resources it acquires from itself are in fact borrowed from those top containers' peer. As to event, swing event is not the event generated from the underlying system. It is in fact a pseudo event which is generated when the top container processes AWT event. We'll detail it later in the event parts. Swing和SWT在它们的实现上都使用了模拟。SWT只模拟平台上缺失的组件。区别是SWT的模拟更像是AWT的Canvas实现的模拟。SWT的Composite类有它自己在操作系统中相应的对等体。它从自己的对等体中获得所有它所需要的资源如图形处理的对象，字体和颜色等。它直接从操作系统获取所有的事件并进行处理。然而，Swing组件在操作系统中没有相应的对等体。它只是一块顶层容器中的逻辑区域，实际上它从顶层容器的对等体中借用资源。Swing的事件并不是底层系统产生的事件。它们实际是由顶层容器处理AWT事件所产生的伪事件。我们会在稍后的事件部分中详细介绍它。
Graphical Layer Architecture图形层结构
The other difference is that swing components have its own separate z-order system from AWT components. As I mentioned above, swing components share a same peer with the top AWT container. Therefore, swing components have same z-order with the top container. SWT and AWT components each have a different z-order from the top container. So if AWT components and Swing components are mixed together, Swing components will probably be hidden by AWT components, because z-order values of AWT components are higher than the top container, while Swing components have the same z-order value with the top container. When operating system begin to update the UI, top container and swing components are always painted earlier than those of AWT. When they finished painting, AWT components will wipe out what swing has painted. So it is not encouraged to mix swing and AWT components together. If there are floating swing components such as menu, AWT component probably can hide menus. 另一个不同之处是Swing组件的z-order系统是来自于AWT组件的。如上所述，Swing组件与顶层AWT容器共享一个对等体。因此，Swing组件也和顶层容器有相同的z-order。SWT和AWT组件都有不同于顶层容器的z-order，通常是高于顶层容器。故而如果AWT组件和Swing组件混合在一起的话，Swing组件将可能被AWT组件遮住。当操作系统开始更新UI的时候，顶层容器和Swing组件总是先于AWT组件绘制。当它们完成绘制，AWT组件会覆盖Swing可能绘制过的地方。因此不提倡Swing和AWT组件的混用。如果有一个浮动的Swing组件如菜单，AWT组件很可能遮盖菜单。
Layout Manager布局管理器
Not all of the elements of the three are different. Layout manager is an exception. What is layout manager? When developing a gui application, developers need to re-position or resize components when the container is resized. In traditional language, this is usually achieved by listening to resizing events. The code snippets usually scattered around and mess up the code. Java introduces the idea of wrapping layout codes together and name it Layout Manager. When a layout manager object is set to the container, it is automatically connected to resizing events. When resizing happens, layout method of the manger is called to re-position or reshape its children components. 并不是三者中的所有部分都是不同的。布局管理器是一个例外。开发GUI应用程序，当容器改变大小的时候，组件需要重定位或改变大小。在传统的编程语言中，这依靠监听大小改变的事件来实现。相应的片段散落在源代码的各个角落降低了程序的可读性。Java引入了将布局代码封装的思路，称之为布局管理器。当布局管理器对象被设置到一个容器中，它自动处理大小改变的事件。当大小改变时，管理器的布局方法被调用以重定位子组件或调整它们的形状。 AWT, SWT and Swing agree on this infrastructure. However every one has its own specific layout managers. Because AWT and Swing share a common parent class java.awt.Component, therefore AWT and Swing layout manger can work interchangeably. AWT，SWT和Swing都以这样的方式来组织，而都有它们各种独特的布局管理器。由于AWT和Swing拥有一个共同的超类java.awt.Component，它们的布局管理器可以交替地使用。 AWT, SWT, Swing: Java GUI Clean Up (3) [翻] Posted on 2007-11-29 08:21 Matthew Chen 阅读(412) 评论(0) 编辑 收藏 所属分类: Java SE
原文：http://blogs.sun.com/Swing/entry/awt_swt_swing_java_gui2 作者：williamchen 译者：Matthew Chen 备注：内容有一些也是我以前不知道的，我也不得不说两句，红字为评论。
Look And Feel观感
Native toolkits including SWT and AWT do not support Look And Feel mechanism. They bind their components to operating systems, which have both pros and cons. One of the cons is that they cannot support pluggable Look And Feel. Handling the drawing process to operating system deprives of their ability to customize component look and feel. This prevent them from providing Look And Feel mechanism. Look And Feel mechanism is becoming more and more indispensable in GUI toolkit. 包括SWT和AWT在内的本地工具集并不支持Look And Feel机制。它们将组件捆绑在操作系统上，有其优势和劣势。其中的一个劣势是它们不支持可插拔的Look And Feel。将绘制处理交由操作系统完成剥夺了它们实现自定义组件Look And Feel的能力，也就使得它们无法提供这种机制。Look And Feel机制越来越成为GUI工具集中不可缺少的一部分。
Swing has wonderful Look And Feel support. You can even change Swing application's look and feel dynamically. This is an insurmountable task for AWT and SWT, since they handle their control entirely to operating system. I've heard many people complains about Sun on Swing design. They think why Swing can not be built on SWT like AWT. In fact, Look And Feel mechanism is one of reason why Swing should go in that direction. If Swing follows the way that wrapping existing components and emulating
non-existing components, it cannot provide Look And Feel mechanism. Providing pluggable Look and Feel mechanism is an insurmountable task to native strategy. Swing拥有很好的Look And Feel支持。你甚至可以动态地改变Swing应用程序的Look And Feel，鉴于AWT和SWT将组件控制完全交给操作系统处理，这是它们所无法超越的任务。我曾经听很多人抱怨过Sun在Swing上的设计。他们觉得Swing为什么不像SWT那样沿用AWT的思路呢？事实上，Look And Feel机制正是Swing走到这个方向上的原因之一。如果Swing遵循的是包装已有的组件并模拟不存在的组件的路线，那它就无法提供Look And Feel机制。因为提供Look And Feel机制是本地策略所无法完成的任务。
Graphics and Fonts图形和字体
Since Swing is an emulated system, its graphics tools is much more powerful than those of AWT and SWT. Swing bases its whole system on two fundamental components, one is Java 2D and the other is AWT. Java 2D is a powerful library in Java. It provides rich features of advanced image processing, color management, graphical drawing and filling, coordination system transmission and font manipulations. AWT and SWT only provides limited access to these features. Compared to Java 2D, they are comparably primitive and inferior. Swing作为一个仿生系统，它的图形工具集较之AWT和SWT强大许多。Swing基于其自身系统中的两个基础组件群：Java 2D和AWT。Java 2D在Java中是强大的类库，它为高级图像处理，颜色管理，图形绘制和填充，坐标系变换和字体生成提供丰富的特性。相较之下，AWT和AWT仅对这些特性提供有限访问，它们是相对原始和低级的。
JavaBeans Specification Conformity JavaBeans规范一致性
Swing and AWT was designed with JavaBeans specification in mind. So their component classes conform to JavaBeans specification. However SWT does not quite conforms to this specification. For example, there's no empty-argument constructor in every component classes. Every component in SWT must has at least a single parameter constructor. This parameter is the parent of the components. That means whenever a component is created, it must be immediately added to a component tree. A component cannot exist without registered native peer. By this way, SWT wants the components created by programmer can be automatically released when dispose methods of display is called. Swing和AWT在设计之初就秉承了JavaBeans规范，它们的组件类与JavaBeans规范一致。然而SWT并没有很好的遵循这一规范。例如，在SWT的组件类中没有无参的构造器。每个组件都必须至少拥有一个单参数的构造器。这个参数就是父组件的引用。这意味着无论何时组件被创建，它都直接被添加到一棵组件树中。一个组件无法脱离于已注册的本地对等体而存在。这样，SWT就能让由编程者创建的组件在display的dispose方法被调用的时候自动被释放。
More on Resource Management更多在资源管理方面的内容
SWT's strategy of component constructor can eliminate some possibility of memory leaks. AWT has the similar question about resource management. But it resolve the issues using a different way. When an AWT component is created, the counterpart peer will not immediately be added. When it is added to a component tree, but the tree is not visible yet, the peer will be still not created. Only when top container is set visible, will these peers be created. The method creating the peer generally is located in addNotify method. They generally call their parent's addNotify recursively until all of the peers on the component tree are created. When top container is dismissed by calling dispose method, a reverse method removeNotify will be called recursively to release these peers. By this way, AWT manage its resource without any interference from the developers.
SWT的组件构造器策略可以排除某些内存泄露的可能性。AWT在资源管理方面也有类似的问题。但它采用了不同的方式解决。当AWT组件被创建的时候，相应的对等体并不会立即被创建。即便它被添加到一棵组件树，而如果这棵树还不
可见，那么对等体仍不会被创建。只有当顶层容器被设为可见，这些对等体才会被创建。创建对等体的方法通常在addNotify中，它们通常递归地调用父组件的addNotify直到整棵组件树上的对等体都被创建了。当顶层容器由dispose方法销毁的时候，一个对应的方法removeNotify将会被递归地调用以释放这些对等体。这样，AWT在不由开发者介入的情况下管理了它的资源。
Event System事件系统
An event is the message sent to a GUI system, either from the outside or from the system itself, which requires certain action to be taken. These events include I/O interrupts from computer devices such as mouse or keyboard or network ports, and logical events triggered by GUI system, such as ActionEvent posted by a button. 一个事件要求特定的动作被执行，它被作为消息由外界或系统自身发送给GUI系统。这些事件包括来自计算机设备如鼠标键盘和网络端口的I/O中断，以及GUI系统的逻辑事件触发，比如一个按钮的ActionEvent事件。
Single-Threaded vs Multiple-Threaded 单线程 vs 多线程
Dispatching events can follow two different models. One is called single-threaded dispatching model and the other multiple-threaded dispatching model. 事件分发遵循两种不同的模型。单线程分发模型和多线程分发模型。
In single-threaded dispatching model, an event is pumped from the queue and processed in the same thread immediately. After the event being processed, next pending event in the queue is pumped again and continues the next round of cycle. In multiple-threaded dispatching model, the thread fetching the
events from the queue launches another thread called task thread, and hand the event over to it for processing. The thread responsible for fetching the event does not wait for the end of the processing thread. It simply goes on to fetch next pending event and dispatch it. 在单线程分发模型中，一个事件从队列中抽出并在同一个线程中被立即处理。事件处理后，队紧跟着的下一个事件再被抽出并继续下一轮的循环。在多线程分发模型中，从队列中获取事件的线程启动另一个被称作任务线程的线程，并把事件交给它处理。而获取事件的线程并不等待处理线程的结束。它简单的获取下一个线程并分发它。 Event processing usually involves changing application data. While these data are often the source data that components display. Multiple-threaded dispatching can easily raise synchronization issues. It generates multiple event processing threads, which might interfere with each other. In a stable GUI system, component should be able to keep the view synchronized with the model. Because of the synchronization issue, multiple-threaded model requires developers to be more experienced in concurrent programing. For ordinary programmers, it is very easy to make synchronization errors. Therefore many GUI system don't use this model. 事件处理通常涉及应用程序的数据变化。而且这些数据经常是组件需要显示的。多线程分发很容易产生同步问题，它产生多个可能互相干扰的事件处理线程。在一个稳定的GUI系统中，组件应该能够保持视图与模型间的同步。由于同步问题的出现，多线程模型要求开发者拥有更多并发编程的经验。而对于普通编程人员，造成同步错误是很容易的。因此许多GUI系统并不使用这一模型。 Single-threaded model provide natural synchronizations by enforcing sequential event processing. AWT, SWT and Swing all use this model to dispatch events. But single-threaded model also has its own issues. One of them is thread engrossment. Since all events are dispatched by a single thread, if one event processing last too long, it will hold back pending events from being processed. If there are PAINT event holding back, then the screen will appear to be unresponsive. This usually make user feel that the software is slow. There are many such slow applications that are programmed by inexperienced developers. What they did is most probably cramming a listener method with time-consuming tasks. Swing is especially prominent, since it is widely used. This has brought swing a bad reputation of slow and ugly. In fact, swing application can be very responsive if you knows to thread. 单线程模型通过强制事件序列化地被处理提供了实际上的同步。AWT，SWT和Swing 都采用了这一模型来分发事件。但单线程模型也会有它自己的问题。其中之一就是线程专注。既然所有的事件都在一个线程中被分发，如果其中的一个事件的处理费时过久，将会拖延下一个事件的抽取和执行。如果有一个PAINT事件被延后，那么在屏幕上就会呈现为无法响应。这经常使用户感觉到软件很慢。许多这样的低效程序是由于开发者的经验不足造成的。他们的做法是将耗时任务填充到监听器方法中。由于这种错误的编程方式在Swing中大量被使用而尤为突出，这也是它慢而丑陋的坏名声的由来之一。实际上，如果你懂得使用线程，Swing应用程序可以表现出很高的响应度。[没错，三者在gui上都是典型的单线程事件分发模式，如果你了解操作系统和编程语言的实现细节，你就不会对此表现的诧异，因为单核中，多线程和多进程本质上也是单任务处理基础上的抽象。]
Thread Safety线程安全
The solution to the above issue is launching a separate worker thread to handle long-time processing, thus releasing the event dispatching thread to continue. Just like what multiple-threaded model does. But that also invites the synchronization issues that happen in multiple-threaded model. Many GUI toolkits often setup some innate mechanism to avoid this, for example, by a complex lock on a component tree. Developers don't have to worry about how to program to be safe. This kind of toolkit is called thread-safe. AWT is one of them.
上述问题的解决方案是启动一个单独的工作者线程来完成耗时处理，这样就能把事件分发线程释放处理以继续运作。如果多线程模型中所做的那样，然而这同样会引入在多线程模型中出现的同步问题。许多GUI工具集都有自己先天性的机制来解决这一问题，例如，在组件树上的组合锁。开发者不需要为如何安全编程而操心。这样的工具集被成为线程安全的。AWT就是其中之一。 However, it is often too complex to build such GUI system and usually it creates a lot overhead because of unnecessary synchronization. Therefore, Swing and SWT were designed to be thread unsafe. That means developers have to program carefully when they want to do multi-threading task. There is a little difference between SWT and Swing about runtime behavior towards thread safety. SWT always checks if the action modifying component takes place in the event dispatching thread. By this way, developers can find out the probable synchronization issues. Swing does not have. This is a shortage of Swing, which I think should not be so hard to implement. 然而，由于不必要的同步使得建立这样的GUI系统过于负责并造成了额外的开销。因此，Swing和SWT被设计为非线程安全的，这意味着开发者必须谨慎地实现他们的多线程任务。SWT和Swing在运行时线程安全行为上有一个小小的区别。SWT总是检查改变组件的操作是否在事件分发线程上执行。这样，开发者就能够发现同步问题。而Swing不这样，这是Swing的一个不知之初，这其实并不难实现。[Swing似乎有相应的checkLock这样的方法，检查是否在事件分发线程上执行应该已经由Swing实现了，你不必显示调用它，因为你调用的每一个组件操作方法都首先要执行一遍它]
Event Dispatching Thread事件分发线程
AWT reads the primitive event from the operating systems and process them in java codes. AWT event dispatching thread is named as AWT-{OS}-Thread. This thread is launched implicitly by AWT system. When an AWT application launches, this thread starts in background, pumping and draining events from the operating systems. When logical events such button action is fired, it is passed over to action listeners registered on button. Developers can also listen to primitive events such as mouse, keyboard or paint event to write customized AWT components. This is generally done by extending AWT Canvas component. This component enables all of the available event happened on them, and by overriding the event processing method, you can implement a custom component. AWT读取操作系统中的基本事件并在java代码中处理它们。AWT事件分发线程被命名为 AWT-{OS}-Thread。这个线程由AWT系统隐式启动。当AWT应用程序启动时，这个线程在背后启动，在操作系统上抽取和移除事件。当诸如按钮动作这样的逻辑事件被触发时，它传递给注册在按钮上的操作监听器。开发者也能为AWT组件编写鼠标，键盘和绘制事件的事件监听器。这通常通过扩展AWT Canvas组件来完成。这一组件支持了所有已提供的事件，而且你可以通过重写事件处理方法，实现一个自定义的组件。 However, in Swing, this is a different thread. Swing takes AWT events as the input of its event system. It gets AWT events and after some initial processing, generate a swing counterpart event and put it into its own event queue. Swing has own dispatching thread, usually named EventQueue-0. This thread pump swing events from the event queue, just as AWT does from the operating system. Then it dispatches this event to the target components. Usually an event is first post to the top container components. This event is then processed by the top container's dispatch methods. Then it may re-dispatching or re-targeting this event to a swing component, which in turn continues the processing by its listeners. 然而，在Swing中，这是一个不同的线程。Swing把AWT事件作为自身事件系统的一个输入。它获取AWT事件并做一些初始化处理，产生一个对应的Swing事件并把它放到自己的事件队列上。Swing也有自己的事件分发线程，通常命名为EventQueue-0。这个线程从事件队列中抽取Swing事件，就如同AWT从操作系统中抽取那样。然后它把事件分发给目标组件。通常事件首先被分发给组件的顶层容器，然后由顶层容器的dispatch方法处理，它可能被再分发或重定向到一个Swing组件，在那里继续由自己的监听器进行处理。
For example, when a mouse moves over a Jbutton on a Jframe, an AWT event targeting Jframe is fired to the AWT-thread. The AWT-thread checks to see if it needs further processing. Then it wraps the event into a Swing MouseEvent object and enqueue it into the EventQueue. Upon receiving the MouseEvent, EventQueue-0 pumps this event out and dispatch it to Jframe by calling its.dispatching method. This method then translate MouseEvent and figure out the target Swing component. Here, the component is Jbutton. After that, it created a new MouseEvent with the new coordinations and event source re-target to the Jbutton. After that, it calls the jbutton.dispatch to continue dispatching. Jbutton.dispatch filters these event to a specific method and finally hit the point where it is dispatched to specific mouse listener. 例如，当一个鼠标移过一个JButton或JFrame时，一个指向JFrame的AWT事件在AWT线程上触发。AWT线程检查它是否需要作更多的处理，然后把它包装成一个Swing的MouseEvent对象并把它添加到EventQueue队列中。当获得MouseEvent事件后，EventQueue-0抽取这个事件并判断出目标Swing组件。这里，这个组件是JButton。然后它产生了一个包含相对坐标位置和事件源的新的MouseEvent重定向到这个JButton上，然后调用这个JButton的dispatch以继续分发。JButton的dispatch过滤事件给特定的方法最终实现由鼠标监听器在该点上的分发的点击。 SWT is more akin to AWT. The only difference is that it requires the developers to explicitly write the event looping codes. However, the underneath implementation is different from that of AWT. Look at the code that SWT read and dispatching events, it reminds you MFC code style. SWT更类似于AWT。唯一的区别是它要求开发者显式地书写事件循环代码。然而底层的实现细节是不同于AWT的。看看SWT的读取和分发事件代码，它会让你想起MFC的代码风格。
Event Listener事件监听器
AWT, SWT and Swing have similar event listener models. They all use observer pattern, in which, components and listeners are connected by adding listeners to components. This model forms a object-net model as shown in the following figure. When an event is fired and transmitted to the component by dispatching, the component call its listeners to process this event. A listener can also further dispatching this event after processing, or it can event generate a new event and broadcast it to other nodes of the net. Basically there are two different way of broadcasting events. One is synchronously calling other listeners. The other is asynchronously posting this event to the queue, where it can get dispatched during next round of event dispatching. AWT，SWT和Swing都有相似的事件监听器模型。它们都使用观察者模式，组件和监听器的连接方式是把监听器添加到组件上,这组成了一个对象网络的模型。当事件被触发并分发给组件，组件调用它的监听器以处理事件。一个监听器也可以继续分发事件给后续的处理，或产生一个新的事件并把它广播到网络中的其他节点上。基本上有两种不同的广播事件方式。一种是同步调用监听器。另一种是异步地将事件发送回队列，它将在新一轮的事件分发中被分发出去。 Besides post method, Swing has some other way of dispatching asynchronous event. One of them is invokeLater from SwingUtilities or EventQueue. This method can wrap a Runnable object into a event and post it into the event queue. This ensures the run method of Runnable can be executed on the event dispatching thread, enabling thread-safety operation. In fact, Swing Timer and SwingWorker is implemented based on this mechanism. SWT also has this counterpart utilities which can asynchronously post events. Its invokeLater counterpart is display.asyncExec which takes a Runnable object as parameter. 除了直接发送给队列的方式，Swing还有一些其他的分发异步事件的方法。其中之一是调用SwingUtilities 或EventQueue 的invokeLater，这一方法包装一个Runnable对象到事件中并把它发送给事件队列。这确保了Runnable的run方法能在事件分发线程上执行，保证了线程安全。实际上，Swing的Timer好SwingWorker基于这一机制实现。SWT也有相应的发送异步事件的方式。它的invokeLater的对应方法是display.asyncExec，它以一个Runnable对象作为参数。
AWT, SWT, Swing: Java GUI Clean Up (4)[翻] Posted on 2007-11-29 08:22 Matthew Chen 阅读(482) 评论(3) 编辑 收藏 所属分类: Java SE
原文：http://blogs.sun.com/Swing/entry/awt_swt_swing_java_gui3 作者：williamchen 译者：Matthew Chen 备注：翻译好累，但是第4篇是最有料的，我又不得不用红字写一些看法了。
Pros & Cons
To conclude the article, I'll give a list of pros & cons for each of them from a technical perspective. 我从一个技术层面给出了他们优劣势上的一个清单，以结束本文。
AWT
AWT is a deprecated toolkit by Sun. However, it does has advantage. In many areas other than desktop environment such as mobile or embedded device, AWT has many advantages. AWT是Sun不推荐使用的工具集。然而它在许多非桌面环境如移动或嵌入式设备中有着自己的优势。[SWT因相同的理由在mobile环境中也具有优势，那Android呢。Java是世界上用得最广泛的编程语言，然而分裂和变异是生命体进化的必然，java guys，你准备好面对即将到来的一切了吗？] Less memory. Therefore it is suitable for developing GUI application which runs in an limited environment, for example, mobile phone and so on. 更少的内存。它对运行在有限环境中的GUI程序的开发，是合适的。
1. Less startup time. Because AWT components are native components which are implemented by the operating system, most of the binary codes can be loaded in advanced, for example, when operating system starts. This can help to reduce AWT application startup time.
2. More responsive, Because native components are rendered by operating systems.
3. Standard GUI toolkit supported by JRE since java 1.x time. You don't have to install them separately. You don't have to worry about platform differences.
4. Mature and stable. Seldom will it crash you applications and it just works.
1. 更少的启动事件。由于AWT组件是本地由操作系统实现的。绝大多数的二进制代码已经在如系统启动的时候被预装载了，这降低了它的启动事件。 2. 更好的响应。由于本地组件由操作系统渲染。 3. 从java 1.x时代就为JRE支持的标准GUI工具集，你不用单独安装它，你不用担心平台差异的问题。 4. 成熟稳定的。它能够正常工作并很少使你的程序崩溃。 However, everything has its own Achilles heel. Let's enumerate them: 然而，事物都有它们不好的一面。让我们来例数它吧。
1. Less component types. Table and tree are very important components missing. while table and tree are very commonly used components in desktop applications.
2. Lacking rich component feature. Its buttons cannot have icon attached. This is clearly due to the fact, it is design according to principle.
3. No Look And Feel support. AWT is designed to use native components. Therefore, it depends on the system to provide Look And Feel support. If there are no such support on the target platform, there's no way for AWT to change its look and feel.
4. Not extensible. AWT components are native components. The JVM instance of AWT classes are in fact only references to the native components. The only extension point of AWT is its Canvas component, where you can create a custom component from scratch. However there's no way to extends and reuse an existing AWT component.
1. 更少的组件类型。表和树这些重要的组件缺失了。它们是桌面应用程序中普遍使用的。 2. 缺乏丰富的组件特征。按钮不支持图片附着。这很明显是它遵循的设计原则造成的。 3. 不支持Look And Feel。AWT被设计为使用本地组件。因此，它依赖系统来提供Look And Feel支持。如果目标系统并不支持这一特性，那么AWT将无法改变它的Look And Feel。 4. 无扩展性。AWT的组件是本地组件。JVM中的AWT类实例实际只是包含本地组件的引用。唯一的扩展点是AWT的Canvas组件，你可以从零开始创建自定义组件。然而无法继承和重用一个已有的AWT组件。[SWT同样，extends在这里的使用确实不如Swing可以做到的事情多，但别忘了原生只是人们加给SWT的一个名字而已，它的姓是IBM]
SWT
SWT has the following advantages: SWT有如下优势：
1. Rich component types. SWT provide a wide variety of components, from primitive components such as Buttons and Labels to Tables and Trees.
2. Relative rich component feature. Although SWT is also designed following LCD principle, it has been re-engineered to support more component features by emulations. So compared to AWT, it has relative more component features.
3. Better response time. Due to the same reason as AWT, SWT components are wrapped native components, which are rendered by the operating system. Operating system can usually optimize the rendering process. It often store the GUI binaries as shared library, which reduces memory footprint, therefore improve the response performance.
4. Less memory consumption. It is easy to understand this point, since operating system can take care of the native components for applications.
1. 丰富的组件类型。SWT提供了种类繁多的组件，从基础组件如按钮和标签到高级的表格和树。 2. 相对的丰富组件特性。尽管SWT也遵循最大公倍数原则，它可以采用模拟的方式重新设计了对更多组件特性的支持。所以同AWT相比，它有着相对丰富的组件特性。
3. 更快的响应时间。基于和AWT同样的原因，SWT组件包装了本地组件，由操作系统实现渲染。操作系统通常对渲染处理做了优化，保存GUI二进制代码为标准库，减少了内存的使用，提高了响应性能。
4. 更少的内存消耗。既然操作系统为本地组件提供了优化，这一点就容易理解了。 [之前的文章说过组件类型和特征(有时也有特性)这两个概念，三者分别基于两类组件使用原则实现，本地模拟比起真正的仿真模拟确实有不足之处，这种不足并不仅仅是效果上的缺失，见下面的数据输送时间部分] As to disadvantages: 不足之处：
1. Not a standard library shipped by JRE. Therefore you have to bundle them together with your applications. Also you have to build separate installers for every operating systems which you are to support.
2. Immature and unstable. SWT due to its many design defect, for example resource management, and Windows-friendly design, is said to be unstable. It can perform very well on Windows. But on non-Windows operating systems, it is unstable and crashes very often. This is largely due to the fact that SWT leaves the resource management task to developers. However, not all developers can handle resource management correctly.
3. Bad performance on non-Windows. As it is mentioned in No. 2, SWT is designed to accommodate Windows API, which results in bad performance on non-Windows platforms. The end results include slow performance, bad UI feelings, unstable or even memory leaks.
4. No Look And Feel support. The same reason as those of AWT.
5. Not extensible. The same reason as those AWT. In SWT, you can extend the component in a limited manner. For example, you can listen to the PAINT event and add custom drawing on the component. But it is very limited, since you can only control part of drawing process. You can only make up after the operating system draws the component. This is very bad for customization. Many modern applications needs such ability to provide customized behavior.
1. 不在JRE的标准库中。因此你必须将它和你的程序捆绑在一起，并为你所要支持的每个操作系统创建单独的安装程序。 2. 不够成熟和稳定。SWT因其设计上的一些缺陷，如资源管理，Windows友好等，被认为是不稳定的。它可以在Windows上表现得很好，但在其他操作系统上，它经常是不稳定且容易崩溃的。这很大程度上是因为它把资源管理交给开发者来处理，而并不是所有的开发人员能够正确地处理这些。 3. 在非Windows平台下的性能不高。如同第2点提到的，SWT被设计为与Windows API相协调的，这导致了在非Windows平台上的性能问题，糟糕的UI感官，不稳定甚至内存泄露。 4. 无Look And Feel 支持。和AWT同样的原因。 5. 不可扩展，和AWT同样的原因。在SWT中你可以通过有限的方式扩展一个组件，例如，监听PAINT事件并添加自定义绘图到组件上，但鉴于你只能控制绘制处理的一部分，这是十分有限的。你也只能在操作系统绘制完组件后补充，这并不能很好支持自定义。许多应用程序在自定义行为上有很高的要求。 [并不是所以的非Windows平台都是美观的mac或ubuntu，薄弱的操作系统图形支持在大的范围内是及其普遍的。]
Swing
Swing is the most powerful GUI toolkits. It has many advantages as well as disadvantages over the other two.
Swing是三者中最强大的GUI工具集。它和另外两者相比同样有自己的优劣势。
1. Rich component types. Swing provide very wide variety of standard components. These components are as rich as those SWT. Besides these standard components, Swing has a lots of third part components, due to its extensible nature. There are many commercial and open source swing libraries on market after years of development. 丰富的组件类型。Swing提供了非常广泛的标准组件。这些组件和SWT一样丰富。基于它良好的可扩展性，除了标准组件，Swing还提供了大量的第三方组件。许多商业或开源的Swing组件库在开发多年后都已经可以方便地获取了。[标准库中确实谈不上全面，但第三方组件的加入绝对媲美SWT了]
2. Rich component features. Not only swing combines all the feature on every platform, it can even provide additional feature according to the platform the applications are running on. Swing component features are designed following principle. And also swing components are very easy to be extended, therefore, swing components can usually provide much more functionalities than its SWT and AWT counterparts.丰富的组件特性。Swing不仅包含了所有平台上的特性，它还支持根据程序所运行的平台来添加额外特性。Swing组件特性遵循特定原则，易于扩展，因此能够提供较SWT和AWT更多的功能。
3. Good component API and model support. Swing is designed following MVC pattern, which is proved to be a very successful design pattern. Its API are mature and well designed. After years of evolution, Swing component APIs are becoming more and more powerful, flexible and extensible. Its API design is considered to be one of the most successful GUI API. They are more Object-Oriented, more flexible and more extensible compared to SWT and AWT. 好的组件API好模型支持。Swing遵循MVC模式，这是一种非常成功的设计模式。它的API成熟并设计良好。经过多年的演化，Swing组件APIs变得越来越强大，灵活和可扩展。它的API设计被认为是最成功的GUI API之一。较之SWT和AWT更面向对象，也更灵活而可扩展。
4. Excellent Look And Feel support. MVC design model enables Swing the ability to separate component view from its data model. It has superior UI delegation which delegate UI rendering to UI classes. These classes are registered in an object, which represents a specific Look And Feel. There are now hundreds of LookAndFeel libraries available, which provides all kinds of different flavors of GUI styles. You can even write your own LookAndFeel based on others work. 出色的Look And Feel支持。MVC设计模型允许Swing分离组件试图和它的数据模型。它有高级的UI委托来将UI渲染委托给UI类。这些类被注册到一个展现特定的Look And Feel的对象上。已经有上百个Look And Feel 可以提高各种各样的GUI风格。你甚至可以基于其他人的成果编写组件的Look And Feel 。
5. Standard GUI library. Swing as well as AWT is a standard library of JRE. Therefore, you don't have to ship them separately with your application. You don't have to worry about platform incompatibility since they are platform independent.标准的GUI库。Swing和AWT一样是JRE中的标准库。因此，你不用单独地将它们随你的应用程序一起分发。它们是平台无关的，所以你不用担心平台兼容性。
6. Stable and mature. Swing has been developed for more than 7 years. It is becoming more and more mature and stable especially after Java 5. Since it is purely implemented in java, therefore, it has not such compatibility issues as those of SWT. Swing performs equally on every platforms. There are no drastically performance difference between them.成熟稳定。Swing已经开发出来7年之久了。在Java5之后它变得越来越成熟稳定。由于它是纯Java实现的，不会有SWT的兼容性问题。Swing在每个平台上都有相同的性能，不会有明显的性能差异。
7. Extensible and flexible. Swing is a library entirely implemented in Java space. Therefore, it controls everything it needs. The architecture of Swing conforms to MVC pattern which exerts many of the advantage of Java as an Object-Oriented languages. In fact, it provides several ways to extend the components. Let me briefly enumerate them. A. Extend existing components. B. Extending by composite components. C. Writing custom components using Jcomponent from scratch. D. Using renderer and editor mechanism to extend complex swing components such as Jlist, JcomboBox, Jtable, Jtree etc. E. Creating a new LookAndFeel either by extending existing LookAndFeel or writing a new one from scratch. F. Using LayeredPane, GlassPane or Drag and Drop mechanism to develop advanced components, such as docking components, custom popup windows, custom menus etc. 可扩展和灵活性。Swing完全在Java空间中实现。它可以控制它所需要的一起。Swing基于MVC的结构使得它可以发挥Java作为一门面向对象语言的优势。它提供了许多扩展组件的方法。让我们来列举一下：A.继承已有组件；B.靠复合组件的方式扩展。C.从零开始使用JComponent编写自定义组件；D.使用渲染器和编辑器机制扩展复制的Swing组件，如JList，JComboBox，JTable，JTree等；E.基于已有Look And Feel 或从零开始创建新的Look And Feel；F.使用LayeredPane，GlassPane或拖放机制开发高级的组件，例如浮动的固定组件，自定义弹出窗口，自定义菜单等。[这是一种好的机制，但你不能指望别人永远无法超越你。]
8. Good overall performance. Swing has ever been mocked for its speed. However, with the development of JRE, Swing is performing better and better now. Especially after Java 5, Swing's overall speed can compete with any native widget systems. 总体上良好的性能。Swing的速度是其为人诟病的一点。然而随着JRE的开发，Swing的性能如今已经有了很大的提高。特别是Java5之后，Swing的总体速度能够接近本地小控件系统。
A GUI speed can usually be measured in two aspects. One is response time, and the other is data feeding time. 一个GUI的速度总是从两个方面被衡量：响应时间和数据反馈时间。 Response time means the period between the time an event takes place and the time the component updates its UI. For example pressing a button, dragging a component, changing a tabbed pane selection, etc. In this aspect, native components usually have better response time than an emulated one. AWT and SWT components usually have better response time than those of Swings. However this is not always true. It depends on the operating systems. If native components are not implemented well on that platform, it might be the contrary. For example, Windows usually have their GUI library polished very well, while Linux platforms usually don't do well. Therefore, SWT can perform better than Swing on Windows, but might perform worse than Swing on Linux. In one word, the performance of AWT/SWT depends the underlying platforms. With the development of JRE, Swing response performance has been greatly enhanced due to JVM optimization, better swing implementation, graphics hardware acceleration etc. Swing in Java 6 can even compete with SWT on Windows. On non-Windows, Swing has much better response time than SWT.响应事件指从事件任务出现到组件更新UI的这段时间。例如按下一个按钮，拖动一个组件，改变一个多标签面板等。在这个方面本地组件总能比模拟组件有更好的响应。AWT和SWT通常比Swing表现出更好的响应时间。然而事实并非总是如此。这取决于操作系统。如果本地组件没有被良好的实现，那结果就是相反的。例如Windows开发了不错的GUI库，而Linux平台通常差得较远。SWT可能在Windows上表现得比Swing好，而在Linux上表现得比Swing差。也就是说，AWT/SWT的性能决定于底层平台。随着JRE的开发，Swing的响应性能能够随着JVM的优化，更好的实现方式，以及图形硬件加速而得到长足的改进。在Windows上，Java6的Swing可以媲美SWT的性能。在非Windows环境中，Swing可以表现出更好的响应时间。
Data feeding time means the time that is taken to transmit application data to UI components. For example, a student management software is asked to load some students information from the database and display them on a table. The time spent on transmitting those students from the memory to the table components is called feeding time. In this aspect, Swing usually performs better than the other two. It is
not so obvious when there are not much data to be fed. But if there are tremendous data to be fed into the table, it is becoming more and more noticeable. Why? To understand it, you have to be reminded that JVM and native operating systems are two separate running environment. JNI call made by java program usually consumes much more time than ordinary java call. It is obvious that JNI call is an action that spans two different systems. When a JNI invocation happens, it usually involves two process. One is that Java data structure is translated into native system structure. And second, when a method returns, the returned values should also be translated into java objects. Not to mention other performance costs. When a large bound array of data are fed to native component, there will be large amount of JNI call which can drastically slow down the performance. 数据输送时间是指用于将应用程序数据传递给UI组件所需要的时间。例如，一个学生管理系统要求从数据库中装载学生信息并在一个表格中显示出来。花费在从内存到表格组件的数据传递时间被称为数据输送时间.在这个方面，Swing通常比其他二者的性能更好。或许当数据量不大的情况下并不明显。但当海量的数据被输送给表格的时候，这一点就显而易见了。为了理解这一点，提醒你注意JVM和本地操作系统是两个分离的运行时环境。由于JNI的调用在两个环境中跨越式地发生，通常比一个普通的Java调用花费更长的时间。通常这包含两个处理。一个是Java数据结构转换为本地数据结构，另一个是方法返回时的本地数据结构转换为Java对象。其他的性能开销暂时忽略不计。当一个大范围数组的数据从本地组件中输送过来，大量反复的JNI调用将极大地拖垮性能。[记起了blogjava上阿南的那个问题，或许，正是这个原因吧，数组也是对象，所以转换也不会是简单的] And anther swing advantage is that it has many component models which can speed up the feeding performance greatly. For example tablemodel can be mapped to a two dimension array. In such case, there is even no data transmission happened in Swing components. Swing table directly displays the application data to the screen, greatly eliminating the time spent on data transmission. Swing的另一个优势是它有许多的组件模型以提高输送的性能。例如TableModel被映射为两个维度上的数组。这样，在Swing组件中甚至不需要进行数据方式的转换。Swing表直接将应用程序数据显示在屏幕上，节省了在数据转换上所花费的事件。 As to Swing's disadvantages: Swing也有不足之处：
1. More memory consumption than AWT and SWT. Swing has all its components implemented by itself. Therefore, it has much more classes to be loaded in runtime. There are some other issues such as small mutable object creation, such as Rectangle, Point etc, these objects usually cannot be re-used due to synchronization consideration. Java creates all the objects on the heap. And small objects can often waste heap space. These small objects garbages can not be collected efficiently compared to large objects. Therefore, Swing application often creates a lots of small objects which can not be collected in time. More often it can result in performance degradation.比AWT和SWT更多的内存消耗。Swing自己实现了所有组件。因此，它在运行时装载了大量的类。一些其他的问题来源于小的可变对象的创建，如Rectangle，Point，这些对象基于同步的考虑通常不可重用。Java在堆上创建所以对象。小的对象通常导致了额外的堆空间消耗。许多小的对象较之大对象更难以有效地被垃圾回收。因此，Swing应用程序通常无法及时回收大而小的对象。这种情况的普遍就会导致性能下降。[通过研读一些gc方面的文章，你会对gc有更深入的了解，并懂得如何设计好的对象使用方式和生命周期。另外，component.getBounds(r)之类的方法不会自己创建新的Rectangle，也算一个变通吧]
2. More application startup time. Now JVM is fast enough. Some people even said it can even compete with some C++ implementation. But still there are some java application which seem to be very slow. In fact, many java performance issues are caused by class loading. Class loading is an I/O operation which can greatly slow down java applications. Perhaps this is the issue that every dynamic linking system must face. Swing application usually involves thousands of thousand Swing classes. Before Swing application can show its main window, it
has loaded much more classes than AWT and SWT applications. This can greatly increase Swing application startup time. If Swing classes are pre-loaded as shared system libraries, this issue can be resolved easily. 更多的启动时间。现在JVM已经快得多了。许多人甚至扬言它可以媲美C++的实现。但多数的Java应用程序还是看上去很慢。实际上，Java性能的很多问题来源于类装载机制。这是一个I/O操作，故而能够明显地降低Java应用程序的速度。也许这是每个动态链接系统中都要面对的问题吧。Swing通常包含了上千个Swing类的使用，在Swing应用程序可以显示它的主窗口之前，它比AWT或SWT装载了多得多的类。这严重降低了Swing的启动时间。这种问题也许会相对好一点如果Swing的类是以共享系统库的方式预加载的。[冷启动的问题吗？这种机制是操作系统的特性了，java可能以系统服务的方式出现吗？这个可要好好论证不能盲目做]
The above comparison is mainly conducted in technical perspective. There are many other terms which should be considered when you choose a toolkit. For example, documentation, support, learning curves and community etc. But since we are focusing their technical sides, we shall not detail them here.上述的比较总的来说是技术上的总结。相对其他方面的因素也会影响你对一个工具集的选择。例如，文档，支持，学习曲线和社区等，但既然我们关注的是技术层面，就不在这里讲的太多了。 (End)
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