The Command class for the Java AWT

Jan Newmarch

Information Science and Engineering,
University of Canberra, PO Box 1, Belconnen, Act 2616
Australia. Tel: (Aust) 6-2012422. Fax: (Aust) 6-2015041
AARNet: jan@ise.canberra.edu.au
WWW: http://pandonia.canberra.edu.au

ABSTRACT

Java is a relatively new OO language, with a set of libraries used to
extend behaviour. The AWT library allows GUI programming using an
event-driven model. This has been widely criticised. The awtCommand
library implements a different way of handling events to the
mechanisms of the AWT toolkit, based on the Command class of the book
"Design Patterns" by Gamma, Helm, Johnson and Vlissides. This paper
discusses implementation aspects of the Command class for the Java
AWT. While this can be built reasonably easily, there are some issues
in language and environment that are not completely satisfactory.