RE: [Java-gnome-developer] Development Status

[Jeffrey M. <Jef...@Br...>]

> Tks for your answers. 
> I'm happy to read that there's a lot of synergy between Java-Gnome and
> SWT as I was fearing that too many similar-but-not-really-compatible
> projects were being developped. 
> 
> I have several remarks and questions divided below in remarks 
> regarding
> strategy and remarks concering technical points. 
> 
> 1) Strategy 
> 
> Is it so much useful to maintain Windows+Motif support ? Gnome on the
> desktop is making huge progress, whereas Windows doesn't innovate much
> and is therefore liable, in my opinion, to disappear in the 
> mid-term (5
> years?), because the system itself is conceptually too poor to compete
> with the various OS that the open-source community + 
> companies like IBM
> or Sun have coded in the last 20 years. 

It is not necessary to support Windows and Motif.  I believe it would be
useful to do so.  If SWT becomes a popular GUI toolkit many companies will
use it to develop applications that target Win32.  These applications will
be able to run immediately on GTK platforms.  Also, this makes it much
easier
for open-source applications to provide Windows ports.  In this way, the
Windows users will begin to be exposed to the great work that is taking
place in the open-source community.


> 2) Conception/technical points 
> 
> >A higher-level object-oriented API is needed in order to make
> >java-gnome really viable. 
> I think that's a very good idea to build a high-level OO GUI-API
> gathering the best features of Swing, Gtk, Qt, MFC + more (I actually
> thought at first it was already part of the Eclipse project). The key
> point probably relies on the community such a project is able 
> to gather;

I couldn't agree more.

> I believe many engineering schools (such as http://www.emn.fr/ in
> France, which works closely with OTI) would be interested in 
> joining the
> project both at a research level and at a coding effort 
> level; hopefully
> OTI team would also participate strongly, making the "high-level API"
> more quickly available for commercial-apps use. I guess the industry
> will need more and more advanced widgets, such as hyperbolic trees
> (http://treebolic.sortilege.net), smart tables like those in Gnumeric,
> advanced visualition tools etc., hence the availability of such an API
> could help the industry working better. 

I will be talking to OTI about this proposal very soon.  I am sure
they will be prohibited from direct involvement in the project but
they very likely would be interested in providing moral support 8-)
I am also going to float some of this idea to the core GTK/GNOME
developers at this weeks GNOME Summit.  I'll post my results on
this list.  Anybody interested in helping with some of the initial
planning is welcome.
 
> Which language in the mid-term for OO programming: Java, Python, C++ ?
> Is there any reason to keep using so many very close languages instead
> of focusing on theorical problems related to OO programming?

This is a very interesting topic.  I think solving the problems related
to providing a good OO programming paradigm for GUI development should
be the first step.  That is why I proposed first working on design related
issues.  Beyond this initial design effort, the structure of SWT would make
it
very easy/possible to provide the interface via additional languages.
SWT is structured as follows (if you can excuse the crude drawing):

  +------------+
  |   SWT API  |  - Written in Java
  +------------+
  |  PEER GLUE |  - Written in Java
  +------------+
  |    JNI     |  - Written in C
  +------------+
  | NATIVE PEER|
  +------------+

It is not a stretch to envision the following:

      +-------------------+
  C++ |      SWT API      |  Java - Same public API for both languages
      +-------------------+
      | C++  |  PEER GLUE |  Java
  C++ | GLUE +------------+
      | CODE |    JNI     |  C
      |      |------------+
      |      | NATIVE PEER|
      +------+------------+

The public C++ API could be almost identical to the public
Java API and could leverage the work already completed in
providing the native peer interface.  I am not proposing this
as part of the proposed project but it is an interesting idea.

> I'd be
> happy to know what Ximian developpers think about the OO language
> question, as they're making very good apps based on C/Gtk and Bonobo.

Ximian will be using C# once their C# compiler/environment is mature.

> Java is a cool language but I'm wondering sometimes if these guys are
> not going to produce a new LGPL Java-like language. I believe Java
> should now be released in true open-source, so that designers and
> developers from all companies could focus on a cooperative effort,
> without developing so many language-gateways (of course diversity is
> very important but here it looks like there is no real conceptual
> difference between Java, C++, Python, etc., or is there?). 
> 
> One last remark: Gnu/Linux is still missing the game in the games
> software area; it's obvious that encouraging the development 
> of games on
> Linux could help creating collectively advanced high-level generic
> OO-APIs for open-source graphical environnements 
> ("intelligent" games as
> far as possible of course). 
> 
> Regards 
> 
> Almo 
> 
>