GATE-4.0 Vista Bug

If you are new to GATE and are using Windows Vista, you may come across the following exception in the message tab:

Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" java.lang.NullPointerException
at sun.swing.table.DefaultTableCellHeaderRenderer.getColumnSortOrder(DefaultTableCellHeaderRenderer.java:104)
at com.sun.java.swing.plaf.windows.WindowsTableHeaderUI$XPDefaultRenderer.getTableCellRendererComponent(WindowsTableHeaderUI.java:108)
at gate.swing.XJTable.calculatePreferredSize(XJTable.java:105)
at gate.swing.XJTable.getPreferredSize(XJTable.java:130)
at gate.swing.XJTable.getPreferredScrollableViewportSize(XJTable.java:86)
at gate.gui.FeaturesSchemaEditor.populate(FeaturesSchemaEditor.java:169)
...

It turns out that the Java libraries for GUI's are a little different in Vista from Windows XP. To fix the problem simply go to Options > Configuration and change the "Look and feel" from "Windows" (the default) to say "Metal" and you have a work around. You should no longer see that exception again.