What Is the AWT?
The AWT is a windowing framework that abstracts commonality from diverse platform-specific windowing systems (such as Windows GDI and UNIX Motif). Developers target the AWT and let each platform's Java runtime software handle the details of connecting the AWT to the platform's windowing system. This is in keeping with Java's portability mantra: "Write Once, Run Anywhere." (In other words, you should need to write your AWT code only once and have it run under the windowing system of any platform that supports Java.)
Perhaps the best way to start learning the AWT is to take a brief look at those Java packages that comprise this framework. Table 13.1 presents the names and contents of these packages.
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