javax.swing.LegacyGlueFocusTraversalPolicy should be made public and not final

Name: jl125535 Date: 07/28/2004


A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
The class javax.swing.LegacyGlueFocusTraversalPolicy is currently package-private and final, which makes it totally unusable in developer code. I think it should be made public.

I reported this bug against JDK 1.5.0_b3 Snapshot, but it applies to all 1.4.x and 1.5.0_bx versions as well.

JUSTIFICATION :
In several 1.3.x-based Swing-based applications, I used the JComponent setNextFocusableComponent method to configure specific focus traversal orders. When I moved to JDK 1.4.x several months ago, I saw that this method became deprecated.

Looking into the source code to find an optimal way to "undeprecate" my code, I learnt about the LegacyGlueFocusTraversalPolicy class used to implement the old setNextFocusableComponent behaviour.

Had this class been public and not final, I would have used or derived it to properly manage my focus traversal policies. Instead, I copied several parts of the class into a new class of mine.

EXPECTED VERSUS ACTUAL BEHAVIOR :
EXPECTED -
javax.swing.LegacyGlueFocusTraversalPolicy should be public and not final.

If this cannot be done, I would like to understand why...

CUSTOMER SUBMITTED WORKAROUND :
I have to take the LegacyGlueFocusTraversalPolicy class out of JDK 1.4.x or 1.5.x and make it a class of mine.
(Incident Review ID: 290191)
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