SWT/Plan3.7

Introduction

This page contains blue sky thinking about the kind of things we would like to see in SWT's immediate future. This is a place to collect ideas - it does not represent a commitment to implement the ideas.

Theme Drawing API

• Provide an API to draw operating system themed controls and parts of controls.
  • Partially implemented already. May need to expand or implement on remaining platforms.

Native Controls

• Add more native controls to SWT such as Header and HeaderItem
• Native tool bar support for the Mac
• Single MenuBar per Display support for Mac
• 'Source list' mode for Trees in Cocoa (like iTunes or Mail.app)
• Investigate custom draw for controls other than tables and trees (Menu background)
• Gesture/touch event support for Windows 7 and Mac OS X
• Use native DateTime dropdown control on Cocoa
• Animation, transformation and effects API (something like CoreAnimation or Windows Animation Manager)
• Button with SWT.WRAP

Graphics

• Direct2D
• Radial Gradients

Images

• Add new API to give more control to the way images are saved, i.e. jpeg quality, dpi, etc.
• Add new API to allow storing an image in parts (tiles) for faster rendering of very large images.
• Support writing multi-page TIFF to allow tiled images to be stored as tiles.
• Ensure that any image can be saved in any format on any platform.

Printing

• Add new API to handle more printer options.

Performance

• Investigate performance improvements on all platforms.
• Investigate lightweight monitoring and tracing tool [1] to find slow code and problem areas in big applications.

E4

• Investigate SWT in a Browser
  • investigate SproutCore as a platform
  • investigate and/or implement a JCL (Java Class Library) for the browser
  • implement API to resolve desktop and web (Display.run(), async image loading ...)
  • implement API to animate layouts
  • implement API for async dialogs
• CSS engine improvments

Qt

• Make SWT/Qt ready for usage in RCP apps. (See https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=318484)

Browser

• Webkit for Windows

Ports

• GTK for AIX and HPUX

Accessibility

• Text editable interface
• Complete new accessiblity API

BIDI

• Change widget orientation on the fly
• Non-Gregorian calendar support