Treffer: The Command class for the Java AWT

Java is a relatively new OO language, with a set of libraries used to extend behaviour. The AWT library allows GUI programming using a particular event-driven model. This paper describes an alternative way of handling events which is based on the Command class of the book "Design Patterns" by Gamma, Helm, Johnson and Vlissides. The Command class is built on top of the standard AWT event handling. The paper discusses implementation aspects of this alternative event model for the Java AWT. While this can be built reasonably easily, there are some issues in language and environment that are not completely satisfactory. Introduction Java [Arnold and Gosling] is a relatively new object-oriented language that is becoming very popular for a variety of reasons. It offers platform independence, the ability to be shipped around the network, multimedia effects, as well as being a simple and clean language. Java is defined at two levels: the language specification ties down syntax and to a large .