Re: Java Client : who is using it ? What kind of organisation ?
Re: Java Client : who is using it ? What kind of organisation ?
- Subject: Re: Java Client : who is using it ? What kind of organisation ?
- From: Florijan Stamenkovic <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 10:46:24 +0200
Ian,
I think that what you say about Swing does not stand. Have you ever
worked with Swing outside of WO's attempts at generating user
interfaces either from rules or nibs?
Java Client capabilities within WO can be used in much better ways
then the interface building approach it provides out of the box.
We also have a large JC app, and I agree with everything Robert
says. It looks like we have about two years to get off JC. It works
really well, up to a point. I think the Apple parts work well, and
the Swing parts not so well – table cells being a case in point.
Table cells are rather flexible in Swing. Without knowing exactly
where you see them not working well, it sounds to me more like you
have a problem with WO's usage of them, not the Swing itself. Once
you tweak the tables a bit, you can get more then decent results.
Maybe there was a time when three-tier client-server was the great
white hope. But come to think of it 3tcs has never really worked
well. Burroughs introduced the MT terminal in the early 80s which
split off the user interface into the terminal with validation code
and everything, but that never seemed to quite work. Apart from the
hardware was horrible compared to the TD830 (M6800-based terminal),
and the later ETs and B20s (8086-based modular network PCs), I
think application programmers were just happy to have all the code
on the server (where you still had to do validation anyway).
JC did seem to offer a better approach to 3tcs. Maybe if it worked
flawlessly, it might be great, and I suspect that to get it to work
as well as it does requires a lot of code in WO, which Apple
doesn't have the resources to maintain.
Again, that depends on which part of the JC code you talk about.
I also don't like WO's handling of Swing, and see it as a lost cause.
I gave up on that a year and a half ago. But "JavaClient" implies
more then that, it implies the capability to connect any Java app to
a WO server, and having all of WO's data handling goodliness.
As for Swing as in issue by itself, sure it has some drawbacks, bugs,
and could be better. It *never* is as good as native windowing
systems. But you can do a lot with it.
Best regards,
Flor
First, as I told in a precedent msg, it's important that Apple
knows that JC is used and by whom. Maybe we can hope to get the
source code of JC palettes to rewritte them for IB v3...
It's not likely that we'll ever have access to the source code for
JC (snowballs and hell come to mind). Even if we had the code, I
just don't see any practical way to use that code without the
Cocoa-Java Bridge. So IB 3.0 is out, whatever the case, unless
someone wants to create some new Cocoa-to-Java bridge technology.
I'm certainly not volunteering for that.
I saw the signs of JC's possible demise at least three years ago.
When Apple (or any vendor) begins putting "hints" in the
documentation that you should start to think about moving away
from some technology, we should really listen. Yet, all we seem
to do is complain that they have finally done what they said they
were going to do.
My fear is that if a commitment is made to keep JC alive, that
might limit resources that have been committed to making WO the
best server-side technology that it can possibly be. It could
also hinder efforts on making IB 3.0 the best that it can possibly
be for building Cocoa user interfaces. Neither of which are good
for Apple nor for us.
I think Chuck had a very good point about alternatives. It seems
to me like it's time to find a better way to do client-side
applications than to build more JC applications. If we want Swing
user interfaces, IB is NOT the way to do it IMHO.
In case some are wondering, I do have several JC applications that
I maintain. But, I'd still be glad to see it go. It has some
interesting features, but I've found it so annoying to work with
that I have to say: "JC rest in peace, you will not be missed. At
least not by me." My future plans for maintaining JC apps is to
keep a machine around running Tiger, WO 5.3.3/JavaSE 5.0 just long
enough to get my applications ported to some other alternative.
Who knows, but I'm betting someone comes up with something really
great. There are lots of really smart people on this list, and I
look forward to seeing what they come up with.
On Jun 26, 2007, at 11:02 AM, Philippe Rabier wrote:
On 26 juin 07, at 15:30, email@hidden
wrote:
Since you and a few more people are interested, I will make it. At
the moment I am too busy to put much time into it, but that should
change in a week or two.
Cool
I have two questions still:
1. How and where to most effectively lobby for JC future with
Apple,
or at least for an answer??? There seems to be enough interest
for it
for some of us to work together in documenting this and exchanging
info, techniques and code, but we NEED TO KNOW (hint to Apple
people)
is there any point in it ?
First, as I told in a precedent msg, it's important that Apple
knows that JC is used and by whom. Maybe we can hope to get the
source code of JC palettes to rewritte them for IB v3...
With the different mails, I have now a small list of people
involved by JC. I don't know yet how we can organise ourself
(maybe a dedicated mailing list ?)
2. To all WO users, not only JC, shall we make this effort a
part of
some big WO site? I must admit I am not sure what sort of consensus
was reached on centralizing resources. Or do we start another
standalone thing? If not, with whom should we coordinate this?
We discussed about that during last WWDC. One developper from
Google told us that it's not easy for a newbie to begin with WO
because there is not a single place where you can find everithing
to begin. From my perspective (and not only mine), the good place
is to put more information in the wiki book (http://
en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Programming:WebObjects).
That's the reason why David LeBer has initiated a "WO get
started" web site with links to different websites like the wiki
book.
Some of us could be surprised by this discussion about JC. I
agree with Chuck that it's not a good idea to begin a new project
with JC but the projects, I know, are very big so the lack of
support in a "maintenance mode" is a big problem. And maybe we
could create a dynamic to invert the processus (requires a lots
of works ;-)) if we are able to show how we can use effectively JC.
Philippe
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