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SWT, AWT, Swing, ...what about Cocoa?

I have no experience with SWT. I have tons of experience with AWT, and
have found that if you write your own components, you can come up with
some very nice results, though that process takes quite a bit of time. If you
use the peer classes, all bets are generally off.

If you're the type the likes Swing, I'd say go for it. If you want to write a *real*
Mac application around your Java program, I'd recommend Cocoa. It
provides a native Mac OS X user interface, you use Interface Builder to
define your user interfaces, and by virtue of that, the process is very quick,
and the results are easily editable and quite localizable.

You can take a look at the preview version of a Cocoa-Java application I'm
about finished with (but not quite). Some features, like network play aren't
there yet. Cocoa-Java is very cool, and offers the best of Cocoa and Java,
without having to learn Objective-C, with the benefits of being able to use
all sorts of neat Java class libraries and technologies. It's well worth checking
out if you are writing a Mac version of your Java software.

http://www.seapod.org/files/AquataxxPreview.zip

It's also a good practice to keep the "engine" or "model" portion of your software
platform-agnostic, and then write different user interfaces or "views" on those
models/engines. That way, you can continue to use the framework parts of
your software across the board on all platforms, and can custom-tailor your
Mac OS X user experience.

Steve
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