🚀 go-pugleaf

Hello,

Looking at Borland's JBuilder 3.5, I am pretty confident that I am looking at a
Pure Java Swing interface implementation.  The pluggable look and feel is, given
my limited understanding of AWT and Swing, a tell-tale Swing attribute.  It is
clear to me, using the Win32 interface, that none of the Widgets inside of the
Win32 frame are native Windows widgets.  The menus, buttons, scrollbars, while
made to look a bit like Windows, clearly do not pick up the attributes of native
Windows widgets (e.g., the scroll bars are narrower than the wider ones I get in
Windows due to my customization of my scrollbar setting to make them fatter).

However, playing with HotJava 3.0 for Win32 from Sun, I discovered that the
scrollbars appear to be Windows scrollbars.  Plus, the scrollbars react to my
mousewheel, whereas in Jbuilder 3.5, the scrollbars do not.  In HotJava, the
menus appear to open and close as though they are native Windows menus, but the
text font appears to be Swing or AWT style;  the menus then appear to be a sort
of hybrid case.  Lastly, the buttons look like Swing style buttons - I think the
look is "metal".

My question, after that long introduction is this:

What capabilities exist to get a Java app to look like the native platform?  The
Jbuilder scenario is clearly mimicking the native L&F, but the HotJava scenario
seems to tap the native API.  I imagine the HotJava scenario might introduce
some portability issues, if it taps right into the Win32 API, but maybe not, if
handled appopriately.

What is going on with each of these interfaces?  Any thoughts appreciated.

TIA,
Bill Catlan