A system and method are disclosed for providing additional features in an enhanced
version of the portable application program interface, Java Swing. The enhanced
API can replace the first generation heavyweight abstract windowing toolkit used
by legacy Java application programs, with no changes required to those programs.
Thus, legacy applications running on various platforms can benefit from the improved
functionality. Among the added features are a consistent, platform neutral GUI
look and feel, Unicode font encoding for all text controls, and improved text drawing
(based on the use of a high performance Java font rasterizer). The enhanced version
of Swing is referred to herein as AWTSwing.