[Java-gnome-developer] Re: your mail

[Oskar L. <os...@he...>]

[I am forwarding this email to the list. I hope you didn't mind. :)]

On Monday, November 13, 2000 at 12:41, Morgan, Jeffrey wrote:
> Hello,

Hi Jeff!

> My name is Jeff Morgan and I am the project leader on the Java-GNOME
> project.  This project has been dormant for about a year but has
> recently be resurrected. Currently the Java-GNOME project is under
> heavy development.

That's good to hear! (For the record, Gnome-GCJ has been "frozen"
for some months. I haven't been working on it. I hope to revive it
with GLIB 2.0 and GTK 2.0 soon.)

> The purpose of my email is to establish communications and to see where our
> two projects might collaborate.  Although we are trying to accomplish
> different goals, some commonality might be beneficial to the Java and
> GNOME community.  At a minimum, it might be nice if we could offer the
> same APIs.

Ah, that sounds like a great idea. Actually, I don't think our goals are
that much different. GCJ, the compiler/Java environment which Gnome-GCJ
is aimed towards, does already support JNI. Gnome-GCJ currently generates
CNI, but it is technically possible to make it generate JNI as well.
(Of course it would require a lot of extra manual glue code, but I still
think it is doable.)

You say that "At a minimum, it might be nice if we could offer the same
APIs". I would rather say "At a maximum" :) Providing the same API would be
ideal. But it will not be that simple I guess... There are some fundamental
differencies between Java-GNOME (JG) and Gnome-GCJ (GG). Take for example
the way Gtk/Gdk constants are used. In GG they are passed as int's - in JG
(AFAIK) each constant is a separate object in a class for that set of
constants (enum/flags).

I have provided a list of differencies between the two projects on the
homepage of Gnome-GCJ. It is at
http://gnome-gcj.sourceforge.net/java-gnome.html. Consider it a preliminary
source of details to be discussed. The list may contain some deficiencies,
so feel free to comment on it. (I think this list would be a good place, if
you don't mind.)

I am open to discussion. It would be really nice if we could improve
our libraries by sharing - if not code then at least ideas. :)

Regards,

Oskar Liljeblad (os...@he...)