About the Highcharts4gwt project
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Hi guys,
It is not a surprise that this project here is quite dead. I don't blame the original developers of this project... I'm a developer too and we usually have tons of projects and responsabilities to deal with, and most of time we just don't have the time or energy at disposal to make open-source projects to fly.
Some time ago I found this other GWT wrapper for Highcharts, called Highcharts4gwt. The main difference between GWT Highcharts from Moxie group and Highcharts4gwt is the latter is auto generated by reading the JSON file that describes highcharts options. That makes the wrapper always up-to-date with the latest Highcharts lib.
Of course Highcharts4gwt is not as mature as GWT Highcharts is, but in my opinion, if you have the time (and energy) to contribute to a open-source project, I'd recommend contributing to Highcharts4gwt (by the way, they use GitHub instead of Sourceforge wink wink).
Just to clarify: GWT Highcharts is great, I have apps in production using it, and I recommend it to everyone who uses GWT. But the time is passing, Highcharts itself is improving and the wrapper is not. I think it's time to start thinking on other options, and using a auto-generated wrapper seems to be a good way to go.
I can't say Highcharts4gwt is production-ready (GWT Highcharts is still the leader), but I think the community can help improving it.
I won't comment on the Highcharts4gwt project (seems like a neat project; but takes a very different approach that may or may not work well for GWT Highcharts users.)
But I did want to make a quick note on this thread that the GWT Highcharts project is definitely not dead. The library gets hundreds of downloads a week, and is used in all kinds of projects all around the world. For the curious: here's a fun example of the project being used by NOAA for a Tsunami early warning system: http://www.moxiegroup.com/about/NOAA.jsp
Architecturally, GWT Highcharts includes a "setOption" method, support for anonymous implementations of the "Configurable" base class, and exposes the native chart/series/point objects - which allows it to be "future compatible" with most aspects of new versions of the Highcharts/Highstocks libraries as soon as they are released. A lot of work also goes into making sure that each release of GWT Highcharts is backwards compatible, trying to deal internally with changes to the way the Highcharts/Highstocks JS libraries are changing in a way that is transparent to users of GWT Highcharts. The project also has a corporate sponsor (Moxie Group) whom leverages the library for various other projects, which gives it additional footing and the majority of the support that its received over the past four years.
As Gilberto alluded to though, there are definitely practical realities that cause open source projects to go on the back burner when "real jobs" need to take precedence. That was certainly the case during most of 2014, when Moxie Group in particular had many other projects that consumed most of the available development energy. We're happy that in early 2015 we were able to dedicate additional development resources to the GWT Highcharts project again, and were able to release version 1.7.0 just last week which was quite significant (release announcement coming shortly!)
Thanks again to all those that have made contributions to the project either in pull requests or in support on the discussion forums. Keep 'em coming!