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Twisting

Posted by editor on June 7, 2006 at 11:00 AM PDT


Just open source Swing and nobody gets hurt?

Well, I knew this one would start attracting comments after it got out of its xml.com silo and found its way to the wider Java audience.

In the xml.com blog Sun should Open Source Swing: what is bad for Gosling is good for propaganda, Rick Jeliffe advocates open-sourcing Swing by way of an argument that Sun's stewardship of the desktop side of Java has been a failure:

The implementation of HTML in Java hasn't changed in a decade and is now so far from acceptable even Java, whose design rationale above anything else is Write Once Read Anywhere, now just provides a kludge to embed a non-Java browser. Yet Java claims to be a web technology. What a load of bull. Swing's development effort should be realigned around integrating public-contributed enhancements as a priority over new code.

The HTML browser case is a clear example of Java's management and development over the last decade failing people in a major class of applications. I don’t care if Sun maintains tight control of non-GUI Java; but they have long ago lost any right to respect or trust from the developer community interested in non-server, non-micro-device desktop applications. SWT's widespread adoption is a symptom of this.

He sees salvation in the open source community, specifically citing a java.net project: "Now, of course, there are a lot of positive signs. There is an open source XHTML browser project called Flying Saucer at javadesktop.org that looks like fitting the bill." So from there, he makes the argument that Sun should just open-source Swing, allowing it to evolve independently of the rest of Java. Along with getting motivated developers, he argues that this would be good propaganda, showing that there really is a committment to open-sourcing all of Java, just taking it one piece at a time.

The early feedback is right to point out that lots of outsiders have already committed Swing fixes to Mustang through its java.net project -- the only thing between you and committing fixes is signing the Sun Contributor Agreement... a philosophical problem for some, but not all, would-be contributors.

But be that as it may, what do you think of the big idea? If open-sourcing is, as promised, a question not of whether but how, then is piece-by-piece a reasonable way to do the "how"? This is an interesting proposal, probably rife with unintended consequences. Take a look at Rick's blog and jump in with commentary if you're so inclined...

As for the other item in Also in
Java Today,

if you need to parse XML in your Java application, check out Jacob
Danner and Raj Alagumalai's dev2dev article XMLBeans 2.0: A Java Developer's Perspective. "XMLBeans is a
100-percent-schema-compliant, XML-Java binding tool you can use to access
the full power of XML in a Java-friendly way. The XMLBean solution is
unique because it provides a dual view of the XML data. XMLBeans maintain
the original XML document with no change in information and structure, and
also provide a Java-based view of the XML data."

In today's Forums,
dound brings up a lost feature request in
Multiarrays: Any thoughts for Mustang? (JSR-83):
"It's been made clear that true multi-dimensional (like those proposed but withdrawn in JSR-83) are quite desirable, though they certainly a number of details which aren't easily conquered. At any rate, I'm new to Mustang and couldn't find anything on the status of these. Have they been forgotten or set aside without the intention of being integrated into the language? It would be a pity to lose that drive."

roman_kitko needs help with
Accessing EJB3.0 local bean from Resource Adapter:
"Is there way how to portably acces EJB 3.0 local bean from Resource Adapter (JCA) deployed in same ear? I would prefer using anototions and lookup methods, no descriptors. I know there are no global JNDI names for Local beans registered. It is possible in JBOSS, but of cource it is not portable. Portable solution should be to use local EJB references, but for what (I have now web,EJB) but Resource Adapter?"

Jean-Francois Arcand says the devil exists and lives in the NIO API in today's Weblogs.
In Tricks and Tips with NIO part II: Why SelectionKey.attach() is evil, he says, "this time I will discuss why I recommend to avoid using SelectionKey.attach() when designing scaleble NIO server."

Dominic Da Silva introduces "The simple command shell for accessing the Amazon S3 service" in the appropriately-titled
jSh3ll: The Amazon S3 command shell for Java.

Evan Summers digs deeper into object-relational mapping in
Bean Curd 2: The SQL, in which
"We apply the 'explicit properties' approach presented in 'Bean Curd 1' to object-relational mapping, and the DAO pattern. This enables us to support 'native queries' ie. stringless queries which are toolable, and promote ORM refactoring."

In Projects and
Communities,
the JBullet framework states that its guiding principle is "Keep It Simple". This convention-over-configuration framework, inspired by Struts and Ruby on Rails, lets you focus on the Java code by providing a tag library that mirrors HTML, featuring an easy-to-follow control flow and using no XML

The Portlet Community notes the release of Apache Pluto 1.1.0 beta 1, the first release of the next version of Apache's JSR-168 reference implementation. The new version is a major refactoring, simplifying the architecture to make it more user- and developer-friendly.

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Just open source Swing and nobody gets hurt?

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