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Letters to the Editor

Posted by daniel on September 30, 2003 at 11:44 AM EDT

One of the most enjoyable aspects of editing java.net is hearing suggestions from readers on how to improve our site.

People who subscribed to the RSS feed asked us to link directly to stories instead of making them click on our front page and then clicking off site. People who didn't stop by each day or who didn't get around to reading the RSS feed for a couple of days asked us to create archives. Our bloggers asked (and are still asking) for enhancements to that system which we have rolled out over the past few months.

Many of the suggested changes are for items that are already on our list. A well-presented suggestion has often moved it up the priority stack. For instance, we always intended to snap a daily picture of our front page and archive it. We had hoped to launch with this feature so that we would have a record of the site all the way back to the first issue. With a mountain of last minute items that needed to be accomplished before the launch, the daily snapshot was pushed to the after launch pile. Reader requests moved it to the top of that pile.

We're still working through that pile. At the same time, readers continue to add to it. An item that Dick Gabriel suggested a month or so ago was a place for Letters to the Editor. I didn't understand the need. After all, I was already getting plenty of suggestions about the site. My email is published on the contacts page and I frequently encourage people to send me feedback in this blog using the talkback feature or with email. Dick countered that he had read those invitations and they obviously hadn't made enough of an impression on him or he wouldn't have felt the need to highlight it.

So today, we print our first Letter to the Editor. Andy Freeman sent me this thoughtful note late last week. He has obviously spent quite a bit of time and has read and contributed to many different areas of java.net. Andy detailed changes he would like to see. I emailed him back and asked if we could print his email on our site and asked how we might effect some of his suggested changes. I've included some of his follow-up note as well.

That brings us back to you. Use the feedback to Andy's letter to the editor to chime in, correct, mod up or down, or extend Andy's suggestions. Also feel free to send your own letter to the editor to me at daniel@oreilly.com.

Some of the questions and suggestions we get let us know that we haven't clearly explained what you can do as a project owner on the site. Today in Projects and Communities, we link to the How do I?page in the java-net community. Find the answers to some of your questions in the forums or feel free to ask new ones.

One of the requests we've received lately is to provide an opt-in email version of this daily blog. It's coming, but in the meantime you can use the JavaDesktop Community project Fetch RSS to receive an email each day from us with your daily update.

In Also in Java Today we link to Jim Creaseman's article on how to Enhance Ant with XSL transformations. In this developerWorks article, Creaseman shows how to use XSLT to transform you Ant scripts in three cases. In the first case, XSL is used to localize a build process and override defaults. This is because

the default behavior may not be right for a particular step. This is where XSLT adds the required flexibility. Without the ability to transform the default script, we would still have to maintain many copies of nearly identical scripts. Instead, each build process implements a local script containing only the steps that are unique to that process. A front-end process (also an Ant script) runs the stylesheet to transform the input documents into the Ant build file. Any steps not overridden in the local script are defined by the default set.

The second application may be the most obvious: presenting an Ant script in a more accessible way.

A large Ant script can be daunting the first time you see it. Even if you are familiar with the script, determining where to make a modification can be time consuming. All XML documents, including Ant scripts, have a high degree of structure. With XSLT you can make use of this feature to transform your Ant script into an HTML document that is easier to read and comprehend. You can use XSL to filter out much of the noise and reveal only the critical elements.

The third application is to extend Ant by adding a tag that you might need. Actually writing an Ant extension would require a bit of work to code it up, compile it, and then maintain it. Creaseman explains that

Instead of coding the for loop extension as a new Java class within Ant, I use XSLT to accomplish the same goal. The result is a script that runs in vanilla Ant. The stylesheet simply expands the <for> tag into a sequence of tasks, similar to the first approach.

We also link to Stephen Jungels ONJava articleReadable Java 1.5. Stephen looks at the upcoming for syntax as well as Generics and Variance. He suggests alternate approaches that he finds more readable. The talkback section includes comments from people on boths sides of the discussion.

Today's featured Weblog entry is Philip Brittan's thoughts on Avalon: a new UI for Windows. He explains that

Avalon is the new Windows API, and it apparently represents a major jump in UI capabilities. Part of its value proposition is in the ease of use to developers and part in the experience for end users. In order to increase developer productivity, Avalon will rationalize and reduce the number of APIs in the Win32 stack from over 70,000 down to 8,000.

Simplifying the API may draw developers to the project but Brittan also worries about the effects on the end users and on the Java platform.

Introducing a major change in the UI API means giving Java a good shake. It is likely that it will take client-side Java long time to support the new capabilities of Avalon. If Microsoft can get its users addicted to the new paradigm (by using it in Office, which they plan), then they make Java look even more out-dated on the client side.

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