Re: Does javax.swing need X11 on Unix?

"Tom Hawtin" <use...@tackline.plus.com> wrote in message

news:463a6655$0$8714$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net...| sak...@gmail.com wrote:

| >
| > Does javax.swing needs X11 on the unix platform? I have a machine
| > which havs just barebone Unix with no windowing system and although
| > the calls to javax.swing.UIMangere is in catch all block, it still
| > crashes that it "Can't connect to X11 window server using".
|
| Are you expecting it to do some ASCII art? ;)
|
| Sun's AWT X implementation requires X "client" libraries: xlib. I'm not
| entirely sure of the exact details. You will also need to have the
| DISPLAY environment variable pointing to a working X Server. The X
| Server need not be on the same machine, but you need to be able to
| connect to it. For instance, I sometimes run Java programs on my Ubuntu
| machine, but displaying on my Vista laptop.
|
| You don't technically need a desktop environment (e.g. KDE, GNOME, RoX)
| or even a window manager (e.g. metacity, sawfish, fvwm, twm) (although
| you wont get window frames, unless you explicitly get Swing (the PL&F)
| to draw them).
|
| Older versions also required the Motif library. I think for 1.5 this is
| the default on Solaris but not on Linux (google for AWT_TOOLKIT).

Also, if you just want to run Java without a display at all and are trying
to get around any GUI or Font requirements, look into Xvfb--X virtual frame
buffer. It gives you an X Server that you can direct Java to, but does not
actually display anything. I've used this when I've had servlets doing
headless rendering, but that was quite a number of years ago--there may be
better techniques available now.

Cheers,
Matt Humphrey m...@ivizNOSPAM.comhttp://www.iviz.com/