Tuning Java Swing apps for Mac OS X

Apple Tuning Java Swing by L.+VeGas · 2002-10-09 06:10 · Score: 3, Funny

Isn't that an old Count Basie song?

Not bad... by NetRanger · 2002-10-09 06:22 · Score: 4, Informative

Swing is much easier to create useful applications with; it's good to see that someone is helping go it cross-platform to the Mac, to where it makes sense with the system paradigm. Unfortunately the controls in the standard Swing package look a little too much like Windows 9X.

Perhaps the next thing we need is skinnable Swing? :-)

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-- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.

Re:Not bad... by smileyy · 2002-10-09 06:46 · Score: 4, Informative

You mean the different Swing look-and-feels? Already done.

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pooptruck
Re:Not bad... by foobar104 · 2002-10-09 07:09 · Score: 2, Funny

Perhaps the next thing we need is skinnable Swing? :-)

I think you typo'd here. Surely you meant to say, "the last thing we need is skinnable Swing."
Re:Not bad... by Anonymous Coward · 2002-10-11 08:42 · Score: 0

There is a company (HealthEngage) making personal healthcare apps (Diabetes, Diet and Fitness, etc.) with Swing, which run very nicely on OS X. Plus, it looks like they tried to experiment by integrating several "look and feel" sets.

My method of java development by BoomerSooner · 2002-10-09 06:58 · Score: 5, Insightful

For my apps (that are cross platform) I build the classes in java and the UI in whichever platform I'm using. This allows each program to look good on the intended platform. For Apple Cocoa (java) programming via the Interface Builder is a wonderful tool (and free to boot!). However, I'm not a big fan of Swing. It is very unresponsive on even the fastest systems and even though working with a program can be just as efficient, as all Mac OS 9 users can tell you OS X doesn't "feel" as fast. That is the perception of Java based programs (that aren't native compiled), they are just slow. Sun should really consider a non-backward compatible new set of UI components because Swing was just kiss and make up for AWT (painful beast). I hate the layout managers and building your own, while it is an option really doesn't help in quick development.

Java on OS X??? Got to be kidding... by Anonymous Coward · 2002-10-09 07:14 · Score: 0, Interesting

OK, I'm an avid MacOS X user.....BUT:

The OS is slow.

Add to that the fact that Java is slow and you end up with a user experience that is nothing short of horrendous. Good examples are LimeWire and JEdit...fine apps by any standards, but they are so sluggy that they border on being unusable and bog down the entire OS.

I've tested LimeWire under different loads and settings and regardless it bogs down the entire window manager. Window live drags are slower, the overall OS is less responsive, etc. That's ONE Java app that grinds your system to a halt...and this is on a 500Mhz G4 Sawtooth of mine.

Developing Java apps for OS X is a hopeless case as of present. Even regular compiled Carbon and Cocoa C apps could do with a considerable speed boost. There is certainly no headway for slow, high-level stuff like Java. Well...sigh...maybe in a few years when those 2Ghz quad-G5's start shippings....=)

Re:Java on OS X??? Got to be kidding... by BitGeek · 2002-10-09 07:20 · Score: 5, Interesting

Yeah. Sure.

You don't know what you're talking about.

Applications can be slow. The OS is not slow.

Java on OSX is rather speedy, and compares favorably with the previous platform I've used it on, Linux.

Cocoa apps are totally speedy, as fast as C apps.

Carbon apps that are poorly made will be slow, and if they're really poor (like IE) they can slow the whole system down.

But your generalizations are just wrong.

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Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/ 1816257

.Mac slashdot effect by Kalak · 2002-10-09 07:30 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Since he's paying for .Mac, I'm dying to see how he handles the /. effect. Of course, since this is an Apple subject, it won't be given a real test. If it was makig swing do GTK+/Gnome?KDE/whatever, it'd probably be hammered.

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I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by .hack)

SWT? by smileyy · 2002-10-09 08:02 · Score: 2, Interesting

What about SWT, as used in eclipse?

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pooptruck

Re:SWT? by BoomerSooner · 2002-10-09 08:16 · Score: 2

More details? What is it a layout manager?
Re:SWT? by smileyy · 2002-10-09 08:26 · Score: 5, Informative

This looks like the best introduction:

http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-SWT-Design -1/SWT-Design-1.html

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pooptruck
Re:SWT? by BoomerSooner · 2002-10-09 11:38 · Score: 1

Thanks. With 3 jobs I am one of those that really needs links!!!

He's right. by BoomerSooner · 2002-10-09 08:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

Java is significantly faster on OS X than it is on Linux. It's my understanding the reason the Java versions lag a little behind is Apple helps optimize them to aid with the speed issues.

That being said, I just want a compiler that can build native apps with one code base. Yes I know C++ can "theoretically" do this, but not if you're trying to make it a true native app. I want to say build file menu and the compiler knows on apple it's integrated and on a PC it's got it's own menu interface, on linux you can choose how you want it laid out (SDI versus MDI).

This is the killer app for developers and I personally would pay several thousand for a development environment that could do this. I'll return to my pipe dream shortly.

Re:He's right. by BitGeek · 2002-10-09 09:14 · Score: 5, Interesting

I thought that is what you got with Java on the mac.

I've been doing mostly server side stuff so I can't say for sure, but it is my understanding that you write a Swing UI Java App on the Mac and on the Mac you get the Aqua look and feel. This is from conversations with an Apple developer who was the person who wrote it, but I may have misunderstood.

At the very least it should be one of the choices for looks that you get with swing (Remember windows, metalic, etc?)

So you write a swing app and on OS X it looks like OS X and on Windows it looks like Windows and on Linux it looks like Windows and on Solaris it looks like Swing.

You're right about apple optimizing their JVM etc. The reason 1.4 is delayed (so the rumors go) is that they are doing a complete rewrite. From what I saw with 1.3 they've done some great improvements on what Sun ships.

Wouldn't realbasic do what you want as well? One language-- though it has C support as well-- and deploy on at least Windows and Mac with the same UI.

Inherently when you make a multi-platform dynamically-chosen-look and feel, or consistent look and feel across all platforms, there WILL be compromises because the platforms are different.

So, I'm not sure what you're looking for-- if you think that someone can make one that dynamically picks the right UI without any compromises (java's slowness, or ui variations) then I think you're not quite understanding the problem correctly.

Personally, I have no desire to support the windows platform anymore, so I just do everything in Cocoa with Objective-C. And objective-c rocks. I thought Java was the paragon of perfect languages, but I have to admit I like objective-c better.

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Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/ 1816257
Re:He's right. by Molz · 2002-10-09 11:00 · Score: 1

Well, you are partialy right. If you run a java app that uses swing and doesn't specify its L&F, you will get the Aqua L&F. Thats not to say its totaly Aqua though, because unless you use some MRJToolbox calls (don't remember which ones) the menu bar will still be part of the App's windows.

Atleast that is my experiance so far in doing cross platform java dev on OS X for my classes. What I would like is a java compiler that can do some pre-processing. That way I could put the MRJ calls in, with #ifdef's (or what ever) around them, and the rest of my team could still compile on windows and linux with out any problems.

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Can I Play With Madness?
Re:He's right. by Andre+Breton · 2002-10-10 00:51 · Score: 2, Interesting

They *try* to look like Aqua, but if used Mac OS X longer than a day you should notice the difference :) And for LimeWire: Yes, it is awfully slow, but I use another Java App on Mac OS X: CrushFTP and FTP server. And I'm just happy with it's performance. I guess Java is not the problem, the programmers are.
Re:He's right. by 1155 · 2002-10-10 05:26 · Score: 1

I want.. I want.. I want..

I want a 50 inch lcd monitor that can fold in the palm of my hand. It has to be blue, and also weigh less than a pound. There are paperclips in the secretaries desk, and I think a stapler, for supplies. You have until friday.

Guys, give these people time, you know just as well as anyone else that developing does take time. Hence the reason I can't run arachnophilia until apple comes out with the 1.4 version of jre, or anything else. Give it time.

As to this whole osx is slow. I've been running osx for about.. a month. I like it, and it is faster than any os I have run, and I am only on 256 megs of ram. The fact that I can run windows within the emulator, and still have a decent os to run such things as itunes and mozilla shows that the os is not slow, just apps themselves. Give people time, or otherwise, e-mail their bosses.

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I have no sig

Best Tuning Advice (for real) by anarkhos · 2002-10-09 09:59 · Score: 4, Informative

The best advice I can give Mac OS X users who want to run a Swing app is to change the default L&F to something other than Aqua.

Swing apps are incapable of behaving like Mac apps. Thus using the Aqua theme for Swing apps is the absolute worst possible combination!

One of the key reasons Swing apps will NEVER behave like Mac apps is the Java file primitive. The misnomer File class should really be called FilePath. Since (100% Java) Swing apps use file paths as file primitives this implies that file paths are constant. Thus if you move/rename an open file (or host directory/non-root volume) the Swing app will become confused.

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>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life

Re:Best Tuning Advice (for real) by Molz · 2002-10-09 11:08 · Score: 5, Interesting

One reason for using the Aqua L&F, though, is that it is better optimized for OS X. Try running a complex application in Metal on OS X and again in Aqua. In my experiance the difference was quite aparent. You have a point though that the feel of java apps on OS X is still not quite right, but using Metal isn't any better (it just makes things more ugly).

Cocoa apps have the same file path problem. NSDocument based apps now use FSRef's as well as NSURL's so they don't, but if you write a Cocoa app that doesn't use NSDocument, its up to you to do the FSRef magic you need to track files based on their HFS+ id number.

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Can I Play With Madness?
Re:Best Tuning Advice (for real) by anarkhos · 2002-10-10 09:05 · Score: 3, Interesting

The advantage of using a non-Aqua theme for Swing apps is you don't get confused. You see a Metal app you expect Swing behavior, then you see an Aqua app you expect Aqua behavior.

Your assessment of Cocoa apps is correct except I would add that FSRefs also work on UFS volumes (and probably others) with the one caveat that you can't pass an FSRef to another process.

What Apple ought to do is what they did with the Toolbox more then a dacade ago which is to say deprecate functions (methods) which use file paths as arguments. Instead they ought to use something equivalent to an NSFSRef as a simple file primitive. They should also revise the Aqua HI Guidelines to clarify the behavior of "Save" and "Revert" to reflect the proper Mac behavior which can currently be had by using NSDocuments or FSRefs. They should also clarify that a file's path is variable, not constant.

Ironically Swing apps behave more like Cocoa apps in at least one aspect: the behavior of text views. NSLayoutManager doesn't behave correctly. For example selecting down on the right side will select the trailing linefeed of the last line selected which doesn't follow the Mac convention.

Unfortunately these problems are NOT going to be fixed unless more people send Apple feedback and bug reports.

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>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
Re:Best Tuning Advice (for real) by Molz · 2002-10-10 11:54 · Score: 1

Your assessmeYour assessment of Cocoa apps is correct except I would add that FSRefs also work on UFS volumes (and probably others) with the one caveat that you can't pass an FSRef to another process. nt of Cocoa apps is correct except I would add that FSRefs also work on UFS volumes (and probably others) with the one caveat that you can't pass an FSRef to another process.

Last I heard that on non HFS(+) file systems, FSRefs revert to using path names rather than a file ID, since file ID's don't really exist on UFS (there are inodes, but still not quite the same). Assuming they are still implemented this way they don't provide the same features that they would on HFS(+), but atleast they don't break completely. (and if I am wrong on this, feel free to correct me.)

Ironically Swing apps behave more like Cocoa apps in at least one aspect: the behavior of text views. NSLayoutManager doesn't behave correctly. For example selecting down on the right side will select the trailing linefeed of the last line selected which doesn't follow the Mac convention.

It's a behavior left over from NeXT. I prefer the old Mac way of selecting, but it would be great if they would atleast unify it to one or the other.

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Can I Play With Madness?
Re:Best Tuning Advice (for real) by anarkhos · 2002-10-12 14:31 · Score: 1

You're wrong.

FSRefs are an arbitrary 80 byte runtime reference for a file. For HFS+ it may per chance be comprised of a volume name and FileID but that's completely irrelevant because you're not supposed to store FSRefs and with Mac OS X not supposed to pass them to other processes. With UFS, FSRefs behave exactly the same as HFS+. I don't know the internal structure of the FSRef in Mac OS X w/UFS, but I really don't care either. It currently works.

You're probably thinking about Aliases in which case you would be correct. Aliases are anarbitrary description of how to find a file and on UFS volumes they break like symlinks, which again follows the specification. You can make Aliases on HFS+ volumes which also break like symlinks, just store the path and use null for the FileID and host FolderID.

As for selection I find the Mac selection behavior by FAR superior since 19 times out of 20 I don't want the trailing linefeed and when I do I can always add it after pasting (or dragging) by pressing return. The problem is even worse if you try drag+drop text. Even if you removed the insane delay, the linefeeds would get in the damned way.

Apple did change the selection behavior slightly in 10.1 so selecting to the right would be less annoying (it used to be like a bloody Windows app) but it still falls short, and selecting down wasn't imrpoved at all! They also reduced the delay for dragging text in 10.1 which didn't make any more or less sense than the delay in the first place. I swear the AppKit developers just do this to tease me, what other explanation is there?

What they ought to really do is implement the best of both worlds, and also add some standard cursor icons so you know whether you're hovering over a draggable item like selected text. This would eliminate a lot of the confusion former NeXT-heads had.

Anyway, file some bug reports |-)

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>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life

java ... skins ... by Unordained · 2002-10-09 10:19 · Score: 2, Interesting

Isn't part of the aim of Java apps not to know too much about their environment? Maybe I'm only thinking of Java applets, but it seems that if you're going to build stuff in Java, to run in a VM, you should be hoping for the benefit of cross-platform compatibility, not your ability to fake the look and feel of an OS you could have programmed natively for, in, say, C or somesuch. If it's going to be Java ... at least don't force it to look like it was built for only one platform. If MacOS users -really- hate your application because it doesn't look like everything else ... well ... KDE vs. Gnome users can just say "welcome to the club!" ...

Your right but that's not what I was asking for. by BoomerSooner · 2002-10-09 11:47 · Score: 2

I want an .exe for windows, a .bin for linux, a .whateverthehell for mac, a .bin for solaris, ...

From one source if someone built a compiler that could understand the UI nuances between OSes I would spend loads. Not to mention could you imagine the apps that would be built?

Seriously if a company could use (lets call it NativeJava) NativeJava and build for Linux/Solaris/OS X/OS 9/Windows 9x/Windows 2000/XP with one source file that could be compiled via processor emulation for all platforms, there would be some great Mac/Linux applications because the barrier to entry for building Mac/Linux Apps would be almost zero (you'd want to buy those systems to test of course). Realbasic (as irritating as their marketing guy is) is the closest product to this. However it would need a lot more work to get there.

I just want to hit F5 and have my app built for several platforms and as a developer/business person, I would pay a shitload for this functionality. I currently build apps for all the previously mentioned platforms (except OS 9, I am late to the Mac scene).

Re:Your right but that's not what I was asking for by Anonymous Coward · 2002-10-09 13:26 · Score: 1, Informative

On the Mac it is ".app" for applications, but the convention is for file name extensions not to be shown in the GUI (you get the type in the GUI from an icon or from a complete description such as "Application").

Over time, Apple and Sun and others in the Java community will probably come up with ways to make Java apps appear even more native, especially on Mac OS X, since it is so Java-friendly. Also, once you dress up your application in Aqua, it looks really great and it is very, very easy to use. I added a Java app to my creative tools recently (for the first time) and all I had to do to use it was run it. It appears to be just one icon, but if you look inside the "package", there is a Mac icon file in there and a JAR file and a few XML files that tie it all together and provide meta information to the system.

Here is the app, for those that are interested: MuSing. I added pro drum sounds to it and it is really worthy of running next to Logic and Pro Tools and other great Mac audio software.

There is a great opportunity for Java developers on Mac OS X. You start with your JAR file, and an afternoon later, you have a Mac app. Hire an artist to make an icon for you, or solicit them from your users if you aren't an artist yourself ... you'll get three or four back in a few days and your app will really benefit from a nice icon. That's the user's handle on your app and they appreciate it when some kind of artistic statement is made there that is worthy of the algorithms and whatnot in your application.

Mac OS X is a great place for Java to shine in the mainstream. I'm looking forward to using more and more Java apps over time, and knowing that I'm doing so less and less.

Metal L&F by Anonymous Coward · 2002-10-09 16:11 · Score: 0

Metal, the cross patform l&f is ugly, but it was designed to be. It was only added to be your corporately respected (excuse my bad grammar).

The blue color scheme is particularly ugly. The metal works demo (in the jdk) has various nicer themes.

Back in the early days they had a cool looking l&f called 'Vancouver'. But it was shelved because it didn't look enough like Windows. Even early metal looked nicer, but they had to appease 95% of the desktop market. :(

The irony is that now XP and Aqua are streets ahead, while Metal is stuck back in 1998!!

See http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/articles/jlf- metal-report/

Eclipse? Feh! by Latent+Heat · 2002-10-10 07:19 · Score: 3

I could download and install Borland JBuilder and build and run their sample apps without breaking a sweat.

I have given up on the Eclipse IDE -- the checklists for downloading samples are all two pages long, their menus and dialogs are all non-standard, and I have not yet figured out what options to specify to actually run any of the samples I have built.

Is it just me or is Eclipse just impossible to figure out? I have used (for C++) everything from Code Warrior to Borland to VC++, but Eclipse has me completely stumped. I suppose I could figure it out if I devoted a couple weeks to it, but I just don't have that kind of time to evaluate something I am not sure is of any use.

As to the SWT, isn't that the kind of thing Microsoft got sued for?

As SWT is tightly coupled through JNI to the target system, you have to distribute a .DLL (some kind of extra software blob) with your SWT app for every possible target system. Yeah, yeah, AWT/Swing has to eventually call something native, but those customizations are part of the Java runtime you install for each target system, not some extra blob that you need to distribute.

Also, SWT is much more complete on Windows while the Linux version is "in progress" and the OS-X version is a distant dream. Now isn't this kind of write-once, run under Windows just the thing Microsoft got sued for?

Re:Eclipse? Feh! by smileyy · 2002-10-10 07:26 · Score: 2, Interesting

eclipse took me a small amount of time to get used to, but to me, its the best Java IDE on the market. Of course, the availability of refactoring is the bar to clear to even enter the competition, so that limits things a bit. JBuilder blows goats in comparison. My recommendation would be to create your own project in eclipse and start using it, rather than using sample apps.

To be fair, I haven't tried eclipse for Mac OS X, but all new builds of the 2.1 series are being created for Mac OS X as well, including the stable Milestone 1.

Is it the same as what Microsoft did? I don't think so. I'm pretty sure you had to use MS's JVM to run Microsoft "Java". SWT will work with any JVM, provided the appropriate native libraries are installed. I am a little disheartened by the limited number of alternate platforms available, but more keep coming. Give it time.

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pooptruck

One way to tell it is a java app by Anonymous Coward · 2002-10-10 08:07 · Score: 1, Funny

It will be slow.

No point trying to dress it up ;)

Re:One way to tell it is a java app by Anonymous Coward · 2002-10-10 12:31 · Score: 0

OS X kernel is written in Java?

Reply to reply, from the Original Anonymous Coward by Anonymous Coward · 2002-10-10 08:40 · Score: 1, Interesting

You don't know what you're talking about.

Applications can be slow. The OS is not slow.

When I say the OS is slow I am, of course, referring to the general responsiveness of the UI. MacOS X is a speed demon in many things...but falls far short of Linux, Windows and MacOS Classic when it comes to UI responsiveness. When I use these other OSes I feel like I've just received an adrenaline injection after extended periods with OS X. This is a problem that needs to be fixed, either with some heavy low-level modifications to the GUI or, more probably,...with faster hardware.

Java on OSX is rather speedy, and compares favorably with the previous platform I've used it on, Linux.

That's not saying much...=). Java in general is sloooow...painfully so..and GUI apps for all platforms leave plenty to be desired. I haven't made a comprehensive comparison of Java GUI speed between platforms, but I know this: the responsiveness of Java apps in MacOS X is terrible. Not bad but terrible. On my 500Mhz G4, I find most, if not all Java apps bordering on unusable and avoid running them unless literally forced to. Much to my relief I discovered Acquisition recently, and can replace LimeWire with a Gnutella client that doesn't bog down my system.

Cocoa apps are totally speedy, as fast as C apps. Carbon apps that are poorly made will be slow, and if they're really poor (like IE) they can slow the whole system down.

Any app that is poorly programmed will be slow, regardless of whether it is programmed with the Cocoa or Carbon APIs. My point in the post you replied to is that EVEN these Cocoa and Carbon apps for OS X leave something to be desired.

But your generalizations are just wrong.

I don't think so. It's not as if I'm ignorantly bashing OS X here. I've made studied various aspects of OS X comprehensively and found considerable shortcomings in MacOS X in terms of GUI speed performance. I believe I'm addressing here genuine concerns mirrored by the OS X community as a whole. I want OS X to be the greatest UNIX ever and I think it has the potential to become so. But that doesn't mean I'll close my eyes to obvious problems and pretend that nothing is wrong.

Sveinbjorn Thordarson
http://www.raunvis.hi.is/~ssv

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Tuning Java Swing apps for Mac OS X

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