3.4 OpenGL's Connection to the AWT

The Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) is the windowing system of the java machine. The AWT is included in the standard java package. The AWT for Unix and MS-Windows uses native functions of the windowing system, to take advantages of the existing windowing system. To achieve the platform window-handle, we use the (since GL4Java Version 1.1.0) the following classes:

• sun.awt.DrawingSurface
• sun.awt.DrawingSurfaceInfo
• sun.awt.X11DrawingSurface (for X11/motif)
• sun.awt.Win32DrawingSurface (for Windows 32-bit)

Of course, these classes are not explicit for user purposes, but they do provide us with interfaces to achieve the needed native window handle. We got this technique from Java3D's Canvas3D (decompiled it ...). You can see this implementation in:

• sun/awt/motif/X11HandleAccess.java
• sun/awt/window/Win32HandleAccess.java