🚀 go-pugleaf

On Thu, 10 Feb 2000 10:37:26 +0100, Jean-Paul Bouzigues wrote:

> Using JDK 1.2, I need to serialize somes JCheckBox components 
> which have associated toolTips. I've got the next message:
> 
> java.io.NotSerializableException: javax.swing.ToolTipManager

It is never very easy to trace down why the serialization mechanism is 
trying to serialize a particular object.  Obviously, there is a chain of 
non-transient references from the object you serialize explicitly to the 
object in question, but tracing that chain can be difficult.

I have always avoided serializing Swing components.  For starters, any 
such components will not deserialize properly with a new version of the 
JDK.  You will note that the docs for all of the serializable Swing 
components contain the following:

    Warning: Serialized objects of this class will not be compatible 
    with future Swing releases. The current serialization support is
    appropriate for short term storage or RMI between applications
    running the same version of Swing. A future release of Swing
    will provide support for long term persistence.

Some version of that message has been in the Swing docs for quite a 
while, but the original version said:

    Warning: serialized objects of this class will not be compatible
    with future swing releases. The current serialization support is
    appropriate for short term storage or RMI between Swing1.0
    applications. It will not be possible to load serialized
    Swing1.0 objects with future releases of Swing.  The JDK1.2
    release of Swing will be the compatibility baseline for the
    serialized form of Swing objects.  

Obviously, JDK 1.2 has come and gone, and Sun has not quite figured out 
what to do with Swing serialization.  It is a pretty complex problem.  
Given all of the listeners and client properties that can be attached to 
a component, it can be pretty tough to control what is Serialized.

In my code, I have avoided serializing any part of the UI.  I serialized 
the core "model" objects, and re-create the UI when I deserialize them.  
I also store some selected state information from the UI, but never 
serialize the UI objects themselves.

-- 
John P. McGrath
<JPMcGrath@fast.net>
<jpm@nscs.fast.net>