Java problem; is this Linux-related?

[Kurt Wall]

Quoth Kevin O'Gorman:
> I've recently received the Java source code for an application I've
> been using for a while, and want to fix some of the glitches that
> have been bugging me.  I've gotten most of them, but two are being
> obstinate.
> 
> The original author was on a Mac, and did not have the problems
> I'm having.  I wonder how to fix these, and wonder if I'm facing
> something inherent in recent versions of Java for Linux.  I say
> recent, because the problems are not present in earlier JDKs or
> SDKs.  Some things I've fixed because the original code wasn't
> quite doing the portable thing.  Some I fixed by putting in
> preferences.  These two remain unsolved.
> 
> My Java is 1.4.1_02-b06, it says.
> 
> Anyway, the problems:
> 
> 1) The File Open dialogs now show files in the native order,
>    unsorted.  This makes it quite hard to find files in some of
>    my directories with hundreds of files.

This is almost definitely a Java issue. We use some Java apps
at work and they Do The Right Thing vis-a-vis directory displays.
I suppose you could implement your own file system browser using
fstat(), getdirentries(), and friends, but that could become tedious 
and non-portable in a hurry.

> 2) I'm having trouble making the GridBag thingy work.  I've
>    got one sub-window that's way narrow, and can only get it
>    to widen a small amount, despite giving *500 weight to its
>    constraint.  The overall layout is like this:

[...]

Haven't a clue here. <wag>Perhaps it is related to the windowing
toolkit in use?</wag>

Kurt
-- 
Children aren't happy without something to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.
		-- Ogden Nash