Abstract Window Toolkit Overview
For years, programmers have had to go through the hassles of porting software from BSD-based
UNIX to System V Release 4-based UNIX, from OpenWindows to Motif, from PC to UNIX to
Macintosh (or some combination thereof), and between various other alternatives, too numerous
to mention. Getting an application to work was only part of the problem; you also had to port it
to all the platforms you supported, which often took more time than the development effort
itself. In the UNIX world, standards like POSIX and X made it easier to move applications
between different UNIX platforms. But they only solved part of the problem and didn't provide
any help with the PC world. Portability became even more important as the Internet grew. The
goal was clear: wouldn't it be great if you could just move applications between different
operating environments without worrying about the software breaking because of a different
operating system, windowing environment, or internal data representation?
Java AWT Reference