Nice summary, thanks Joel. GJK
At 08:02 AM 2/2/2007, you wrote: >The whole situation with file choosers in Java makes me want to pound >nails into my eyes. > >People on Windows and Mac OS like their native file choosers, partly >because they have system-specific whiz-bang features. Unfortunately, the >Java wrappers for these file choosers lets us have access to only the >features supported by *all* of the native dialogs, thus sticking us >with the lowest common denominator in the API. This means that, among >other things, we can't have multiple file selection in the native file >choosers---aggravating, because we need it, and because the native >file choosers on Windows and Mac OS *do* support it but the API doesn't >expose that functionality. > >So we're in a hard spot here: Until Java file chooser support stops >sucking, it doesn't seem possible to please people who like the Swing >dialog behavior, people who like the native dialog behavior, and >people (like me) who would like to use the same file chooser throughout >VASSAL for UI consistency. > >So, the short answer is: Yes, it can be switched back, BUT it probably >won't take more than a day for someone else to ask for it to be switched >back to the way it is now. > >Usually this sort of situation indicates that there should be a preference >setting so that users can pick what they want, but having a preference >for what kind of file chooser to use seems a bit odd to me. > >The best solution---that Sun fixes the java.awt.FileDialog API---might >happen eventually now that Sun's Java implementaiton is open-sourced, >but I don't know when (or whether) to expect such a change. I'd love >to hear suggestions on what to do about this problem, as I'm out of >ideas now. > >-- >J.
