Re: [Java-gnome-developer] GNOME Web Start

[Jerry H. <jh...@fe...>]

Yes. Java web start is awesome. Making a similar thing possible with
Gnome/GTK would be awesome. However, I have gone down this path before.

GTK/Gnome are native libs. This means, for the JWS program to run, it
cannot do so in a sandbox. The user gets an ugly message telling them
not to do it.

GTK/Gnome do not use Java class loader to load their resouses: such as
icons, themes, .gtkrc files, and the like. There isn't a good way to do
this with JWS. Gtk/Gnome would have to be able to load their resources
out of a Classloader. Perhaps adding a callback to GTK's file operations
that lets you plug in arbitrary ways to retrieve a byte[] or something.

Both of the above cases could more properly be solved in the same way
Swing/AWTs are. When a Swing program is downloaded from JWS, it does not
download the entirety of the Swing and AWT libraries: they are located
on the local machine. AWT uses JNI (or something) to interface with the
native machine to do it's graphic rendering... and JWS doesn't give you
a warning about this (just like an applet). Basically somebody has
configured a security manager of some sort to trust Swing/AWT. So,
Java-Gnome is installed locally and given permission to do what it
needs. Obviously this makes one click deployment not quite work...
except that your Linux distribution SHOULD distribute Java-Gnome by
default!!!