AWT/Swing and SWT Co-existence

Since Eclipse 3.0, the org.eclipse.swt.awt package has provided an SWT_AWT bridge as part of Eclipse. It performs the very basics of hosting an AWT frame inside a SWT composite.

A recent Eclipse Corner Article: SWT and Swing Integration provides more extensive sample code building on AWT_SWT and dealing with some common integration issues. This code now forms the basis of the proposed Eclipse Abireo Project

Known bugs for SWT_AWT

Swing on SWT

The SwtSwing ports SWT to Swing, effectively treating Swing as another GUI, just as win32, wpf, carbon etc are implemented by Eclipse itself. This also means that SWT applications can run on platforms where there isn’t a native SWT binding.

The easiest way to play with SwtSwing is to use the EoS plugin. It switches the Eclipse IDE over to Swing, with a choice of look and feel – worth doing this if only for the Napkin LaF

SWT on Swing

The SwingWT does the opposite of SwtSwing, implementing Swing on SWT, using native peered widgets. The underlying SWT controls are exposed for direct access.

SWT in Swing

The DJ Native Swing project uses SWT internally to support native widgets inside Swing

Java2D and Draw2D/GEF

Two projects have bridges between Java 2D and Eclipse GEF and Draw2D

1. Holongate
2. JFreeChart – look under experimental SWT in the source tree

MigLayout a Layout Manager for both SWT and Swing

MigLayout is a layout manager that works equally good for Swing and SWT. A layout made in one framework will work equally good on the other.