[isabelle-dev] Popups in Java/Swing

[Makarius]

This is a side-track of the completion (and tooltip renovation) story.

After many years of struggling with various possibilities for popup 
windows in Java/Swing and their many portability problems (evil window 
managers etc.), I have recently tried the official 
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/javax/swing/PopupFactory.html

This is a short description as javadoc on the surface, but there are big 
and complex sources behind it:
http://www.docjar.com/html/api/javax/swing/PopupFactory.java.html

It seems to workaround various Swing design problems, with lots of 
explicit runtime matching of object types.  Thus it works a bit better 
than plain JWindow, but Apple/Oracle managed to bomb that approach 
nonetheless (bad focus, no copy-paste).


The result of studying the sources of javax.swing.PopupFactory to produce 
my own version is now this: 
http://isabelle.in.tum.de/repos/isabelle/file/31f956f42e8d/src/Tools/jEdit/src/popup.scala

It is hard to tell if this is a joke or if it is funny.  The main lesson 
learned concerning Java/Swing:

   * The smoking chimneys of javax.swing.PopupFactory won't do any good.

   * Plain javax.swing.JLayeredPane does all the work.

Lets see if this is really the case -- in everyday use of the new 
completion mechanism (and tooltips) on all these exotic platforms.


 	Makarius