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The Optimist

Posted by editor on November 9, 2007 at 7:52 AM PST


Java's brilliant future on the Linux desktop?

Following up on the news earlier in the week that Red Hat has signed the Sun Contributor Agreement (SCA) and the OpenJDK Community TCK License Agreement, Tom Marble is thinking about Red Hat and OpenJDK and where this relationship is going:

It's important to realize that IcedTea is intended as a temporary project until the remaining closed bits of OpenJDK have been removed. The best explanation of comes from Andrew Haley (aph) when he introduced IcedTea.

With the old licensing issues set aside, Tom goes on to talk about the prospect of Java getting into the "tool chain" of GNU/Linux. This would mean providing Java on all architectures supported by the distro, tool support (e.g., debugger and profiler awareness and support of Java applications), and making OpenJDK a build dependency for Java library and application developers. Then, with Java a fixture in Linux distros, it could start pulling its weight as an essential part of the system:

  • GNU/Linux applications based on Java could have a substantial percentage of code which is architecture independent. This would reduce the number of packages and size of the distributor's archive (because a *.jar file should run anywhere -- you package it one time for all architectures). It would also reduce time to build a new OS release for each architecture.
  • OS developers could write administrative utilities (at least partially) in Java instead of C and thus benefit from a rich set of libraries while avoiding the pitfalls of pointer manipulation
  • The pluggable look and feel framework of Java could help GNU/Linux get beyond the widget/desktop differences (Gnome, KDE, Xcfe) so that Java applications always look well integrated.
  • Developing GUI administration tools for GNU/Linux could improve the "ease of use" barrier for a new class of GNU/Linux users.

Sounds good. But then again, haven't some of these WORA benefits always been part of Java's value proposition? Why are we still waiting for them to come true? Is it just that we haven't been able to assume that Java is part of the system? Getting into the tool chain will fix that. And by that point, we should be able to talk about what Java does, not what it could or should do.

Also in Java Today,
a new Javalobby project by Daniel Spiewak takes a look at the Java Desktop Community's Fuse project. Fuse "is the brainchild of notorious Swing expert, Romain Guy. Basically, he was working on the UI for the Aerith demo for JavaOne when he began to notice a certain gap in his toolset. He was facing the problem of tweaking the colors, gradients, dimensions, images and overall style of the application, making tiny changes over and over again."

As noted on Terrence Barr's blog, a new set of sessions has been announced for January's Mobile & Embedded Developer Days. New talks include Oleg Pliss on phoneME Feature VM Architecture, Design and Implementation, Lukas Hasik on Building slick applications with SVG and advanced graphics, Lorenzo Paralla on JTVOS (a free interactive set top box middleware), and more. Pre-announced Lightning Talk topics include SunSPOTs, Blu-Ray Java, and pervasive computing.

Picking up on this week's hottest topic, the latest java.net Poll asks
"what's your interest level in the Open Handset Alliance and Android?" Cast your vote on the front page, then visit the results page for current tallies and discussion.

Today's Weblogs starts off with James Gosling's observations about
Cell phones in Japan.
"One of the things that's always interesting about visiting Japan is looking at all of their cell phones. I've seen some great things here on this visit."

In another deep-thought blog, David Herron ponders
A Brave New World.
"I really am beginning to think the idea I posted a few days ago is very real. In Freeing the Internet from the Web 'jail', I talked about how The Internet can be so much more than The Web ever was."

Finally, in
The Joy of JCP, Ed Burns "shares a story about the vitality of the JSF 2.0 Expert Group."

In today's Forums,
dslice seeks guidance with Mac OS X install.
"My J3D app runs on Linux and Windows. Now trying to get it running on Mac. I had a remote user try it, and after some fiddling got it running with some errors and poor behaviour. I have just gotten access to a Mac and am trying to see what's going on, but having trouble getting the program running at all. Some help in the installation/setup would be appreciated."

osbald considers the implications of Apple's use of system properties in their Leopard JDK 5, in
Re: New Control Styles available within J2SE 5.0 on Mac OS X 10.5.
"The client property approach while compatible (runnable, if not attractive) seems very much a one way street. The weakness is that its geared towards Java OSX development outwards rather than the more common develop your UI under Windows/Linux and rely on good'old WORA for the Mac. Unless there's some injection magic going on in the PLAF? It's telling that a custom LookAndFeel simply isn't enough on it's own."

Finally, Joshua Marinacci discusses painter use with the SwingLabs' map viewing component, in
Re: JXMapViewer - support for multiple overlay painters.
"You can also combine multiple painters using a compound painter, btw. That's probably the quickest route to success if you already have two different painters that work fine by themselves. Be sure to turn off caching, btw."

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Java's brilliant future on the Linux desktop?

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