Application program interface that can maintain similar look and feel of a displayed image regardless of whether the interface is platform dependent or platform independent

Abstract

A system and method are disclosed whereby the look and feel of the OS/2 operating system is added to the Swing application program interface (API), in an enhanced version of the API, referred to herein as AWTSwing. A further disclosure is the creation of a thread-relative setLookAndFeel method, which only accepts calls from a particular thread to adopt a prescribed look and feel. This makes it possible for an application to have a look and feel distinct from that of the platform, or of other concurrently executing applications. This capability is not present in the conventional version of the Swing API, which treats look and feel settings as global.

1 - 13 . (canceled)  
   
   
       14 . A method for displaying an object created by an application program, using at least one of a system of software components invoked during runtime and adapted to generate a graphical representation of the object, comprising: 
 providing the appearance and operation of the displayed object specific to the application program which may differ from that of another instance of the object created by a second application program;    defining a global setting for the appearance and operation for objects displayed by the system of software components;    defining a specific appearance and operation for the application program;    if an object is created by the application program, displaying the object using the specific appearance and operation; and    otherwise, displaying the object using the global appearance and operation setting.    
   
   
       15 . The method as recited in  claim 14 , wherein the application program is running under an operating system and the appearance and operation of the displayed object is substantially independent of the operating system.  
   
   
       16 . The method as recited in  claim 14 , wherein the object is part of a graphical user interface  
   
   
       17 . The method as recited in  claim 14 , wherein the application program is written in the Java programming language.  
   
   
       18 . The method as recited in  claim 14 , wherein at least one of the system of software components contains an instruction sequence to implement the specific appearance and operation of the displayed object, and wherein said instruction sequence is executed only in response to the application program.  
   
   
       19 . The method as recited in  claim 14 , wherein the operating system comprises a standard computer operating system such as Windows, Unix or OS/2.  
   
   
       20 - 21 . (canceled)