RE: free-format move *USA date value to 6-digit numeric in YMDformat

> From: Bob Cozzi
> 
> I never liked the Java UI anyway--they didn't use it in WDSc since
> it was so slow (are they using it in WDSC now?)

Java's thick-client UI (originally AWT then Swing) was designed to be
entirely platform independent, with a uniform look and feel across all
platforms.  It used only the barest capabilities of the underlying operating
system, thus requiring very little in the way of native code at a two-fold
expense: the UI was slow due to the amount of work done by the JVM as
opposed to the OS, and the UI was pretty ugly due to its lowest common
denominator inheritance.

Eclipse (not WDSC) uses something called the Standard Widget Toolkit, or
SWT, which is a carefully crafted compromise between platform independence
and performance.  SWT defines a set of common widgets at an abstract level
and then implements them on each platform by taking advantage of as much of
the underlying OS API as possible.  The result is a very slick, very fast
interface, but again with two-fold disadvantages: you need a fairly decent
chunk of OS-specific code for each platform, and there are times when a
function simply doesn't work on some platforms due to an underlying OS
issue.  For the most part, however, it allows you to create really powerful,
flexible interfaces while at the same time retaining the native look and
feel of the underlying platform, without extra application programming
effort.

It's been so popular that Eclipse has spawned a separate project called the
RCP or Rich Client Platform, which allows application programmers to write
standalone programs that take advantage not only of SWT but of all the great
extensions of the base Eclipse framework.

Joe