Sivasubramanian Muthusamy's Blog

Community: JavaDesktop Archives

anycar anylane anywhere drivers

Long long ago, so long ago that no body could say how long ago, thousands of people from China, Rome, France and India climbed up a mountain somewhere near Cripple Creek, Colorado and built houses to live in and lived there. The mountain town elected a Mayor who did everything to make life comfortable for the citizens except build a roadway to the rest of the world.

They were an enterprising lot. They were intelligent. They were hardworking. They found a way to generate electricity, invented and built their own automobiles and lived in prosperous isolation to the rest of the world, preserving their original customs in every way possible.

The Mayor established a China District for those from China who climbed up the mountains. The Chinese built roads and created a rule that "The right side of the road is for men, the left side for women and the center for carriages."

And for the Romans the Mayor built a Roman District where there were roads where the Romans drove to the left. The Romans in the mountain town, though they drove to the left, didn't built roads like those in England, for they left the left for the pilgrims to walk down. They drove their cars somewhere between midway and the left.

The Mayor built a French District for those who came from France and the French built roads to drive their cars to the right. But the traffic police man on the street wanted the French to drive seated on the bonnet on the left side of the car and drive to their right, so the Frenchmen became accustomed to driving without a driver's seat.

The Mayor built an India District for those from Calcutta and they built laneless roads. They drove to the left or right as it pleased them, overtook or crossed each other on the left or right as it occurred to them and there was an invisible order behind all the chaos that kept the cars moving.

Many many years, so many years later, the President of America discovered that there existed an undiscovered mountain town and built a roadway to the mountain town. He announced his discovery and the mountain town became an overnight tourist attraction.

People from around the world drove along the road to the mountain town, some drove to the left and others drove to the right, along the road to the mountain town. Their cars stopped at the gateway to the mountain town, and they could go no further. The mountain town had traffic lanes, that were peculiar, very very peculiar to the visitors from all over the world.

So they drove back to where they came from.

Then the Mayor decided to build a new Gateway with an Oaken Arch. He went on air to announce that "henceforth any car will drive anywhere in mountaintown" Those who built cars that drove to the left wondered how. Those who built cars that drove to the right wondered how. They all arrived at the mountain town to find the new Gateway with the Oaken Arch.

Beneath the Oaken Arch were hundreds of multi-district drivers, clothed in oaken leaves for an uniform, who asked them where they wanted to be taken. Some said Chinese District, some said Roman District, others said French District and yet others said Indian District. The driver in the oaken uniform took up the task of driving on to himself, and drove them around, for they are made like that, made to drive anycar anywhere. The newcomers didn't have to hire four drivers to drive in four districts. Any new car destined for any District simply had to find its way to the Oaken Arch. The oaken drivers took over and handled anycar anylane anywhere.

Oaken Arch had a pool of drivers for everywhere, so everycar did not have to carry one driver for every district. Everyone lived happily ever after.

Coca Cola and Java

If Java powers 4.5 billion devices including 800 million computers, 1.5 billion mobile devices and 2.2 billion smart cards, then more people use Java than the number of people who have EVER tasted Coca Cola ONCE.

Relatively speaking, Java is unknown. Why?

Laptop for the World's Children

Two days ago I had a glimpse of the AMD Geode processor and while looking for information stumbled upon the One Laptop Per Child (www.laptop.org) project founded by MIT Media Lab's Nicholas Negroponte and the project is all about a $100 laptop built around a AMD Geode processor with a feature list that is fascinating.

The laptop looks pretty stylish. Weighs less than 1.5 KG, convertible laptop with pivoting, reversible display; dirt- and moisture-resistant system enclosure featuring an AMD Geode LX-700@0.8W 433 Mhz, 256 MiB dynamic RAM, 1024KB SPI-interface flash ROM, 1024 MiB SLC NAND flash as mass storage, high-speed flash controller, 7.5” Dual-mode TFT display with a 1200x900 200 DPI resolution, a sealed rubber-membrane key-switch assembly keyboard, dual apacitance/resistive touchpad; supports written-input mode, AC97-compatible audio codec; stereo, with dual internal speakers; Marvell Libertas 88W8388+88W8015, 802.11b/g compatible wireless; dual adjustable, rotating coaxial antennas; supports diversity reception, 640×480 resolution, 30FPS video camera 1A max power total, 5 cell 6 V battery, sort of a temperature proof design. Looks stylish.

The software ? I copy and paste below:

Components from Red Hat's Fedora Core 6 version of the Linux operating system; we are tracking the main kernel fairly closely. We will support five programming environments on the laptop: (1) Python, from which we have built our user interface and our activity model; (2) Javascript for browser-based scripting; (3) Csound, a programmable music and audio environment; (4) Squeak, a version of Smalltalk embedded into a media-rich authoring environment; and (5) Logo. We will also provide some support Java and Flash. Applications will include a web browser built on Xulrunner, the run-time environment used by the Firefox browser; a simple document viewer based upon Evince; the AbiWord wordprocessor, an RSS reader, an email client, chat client, VOIP client; a journal a wiki with WYSIWYG editing; a multimedia authoring and playback environment; a music composition toolkit, graphics toolkits, games, a shell, and a debugger. Libraries and plugins used by OLPC include Xul, GTK+, Matchbox, Sugar, Pango, ATK, Cairo, X Window System, Avahi, and gstreamer.

Sugar appears to have a original GUI "architecture" on its own, very creative....

$100. If Dell or HP were to introduce a similar laptop, (if this project didn't exist and if a similar product developed purely on a commercial context) the package of features and software and the style, would have caused them to consider pricing the product at a price in excess of $ 1000, justifiably so, perhaps with a little more powerful processor and slightly wider display.

Inspiring.

Java embedded Solaris.

In my previous post I asked an uneducated abstract question "Would there be greater harmony between the desktop interface and the application programs if Java Desktop happens to be the desktop interface in a Sun Solaris machine? Because there is an "already-java" environment in the machine (machine in layman's terms)?

The summary of the responses is that Java Desktop is not rich in Java code and so it doesn't make sense.

I am asking a little more educated question (just a little more) here:

Java programs are compiled for the Java Virtual Machine into Java byte code first. For the Java bytecode to work, a Windows version of Java Interpreter has to installed in Windows, a Linux version of Java Interpreter has to be installed in Linux...

Q:

Is the same sequence followed for Sun Solaris ?

If yes, then I would wonder why. (If you are not aware or forgotten, Sun owns Java. Sun owns Solaris.)

There may be Java variations such as IBM's, but Java as it is is Sun's own. Why wouldn't Sun take the Java Interpreter to the core of Solaris which is also its own? I am striking a difference between installing a Java Interpreter on an O/S from integrating an interpreter like instruction mechanism into the very core of the Operating System.

It is like making it unnecessary for Solaris to have a Java interpreter. (Would you need a translator by your side to translate English into English?) It is like weaving the Java execution capability right into the very core of the kernel of Solaris Operating System. That would result in a significant difference between the way Solaris runs Java from the way another Operating System runs Java.

I know that technically it can be done. But I don't know if it is already done.

In this scenario, would Sun Solaris "speak" Java like its mother tongue, as compared with other operating systems???

Java Everywhere invisible and on the Desktop visible....

Even before a computer has the Java Desktop environment, there is already so much of Java in that computer - in any computer, unix or windows.

Java is all over. There is Java in the computer in so many forms - Java Run Time environment, Java Browser componets, and Java is the language behind several application programs in the computer.

When a Java Desktop is installed in this "already-java" environment, the machine speaks one language - Java... Of course it is not all Java, but what i am saying is that there would be a harmonious interaction between the desktop interface and the application software....

Does this theory make sense ???

What restrains Java from becoming the trendiest Desktop GUI ?

I don't know much. In fact it is almost true if I say I don't know anything about java at all... But I have used some java web applications such as eshare chat. And I recently used a yahoo messenger on the web, that loaded after flashing the java logo.

Java has been there on the web, but I understand not so much on the desktop. May be this has been Java's focus. But with the Java Desktop, it is changing...

Why wouldn't java become the easiest and trendiest Desktop GUI ? Java has powered several applications, and the java programmers are very creative.

So what would stop Java from becoming the trendiest Desktop GUI ? It could make life easy, it could make life even more interesting. Could develop so well as to make Leopard look like the shell of the bygone era ????

Comments
received till 05 30 pm India Standard Time, Thursday, February 1

@fiath: Sorry but I do have some experience with Java GUIs that goes back to AWT and if it wasn't for the new GroupLayout I would say that the layout managers suck. I do understand their concept and how they help to keep your application independent of the desktop resolution. But when I compare Java's RAD support with other languages, it is just not there yet. And the lack of support for many cool desktop features. We add to wait for Java 6 in order to have integration with basic stuff like the tray. And on Windows, developers still have to resort to binary launchers to make the application start like a native one.
Posted by: pjmlp on February 01, 2007 at 03:28 AM

pjmlp: Swing layout managers are actually very easy to work with, and it is the best thing I have come accross for creating user interfaces. Having said that, I do not use graphical builders to create UI's, and I do appreciate that you need to learn a lot up front with Swing. Hopefully this is something that the Swing Application Framework (targetted for Java 7) will sort out.
Posted by: fiath on February 01, 2007 at 01:11 AM

Trends come and go, Swing is here to stay. I'll make a prediction: "2008 will kick off with a new generation of enterprise applications written in Swing". There I've said it. If you define a Killer app as an application which shakes an industry then killer it will be.
Posted by: aronsmith on January 31, 2007 at 05:03 PM

I see a lot of Java scripts on web but not Java. Maybe we’ll see more Java applications on web if there is a better web framework such as echo2. I recently ran into a flash application at http://roxik.com/pictaps/index.html It’s a very cool application and makes me wonder if that can be done using Java. As far as desktop applications, I certainly would like to see a good Java media framework, a better application deployment and code protection if needed. In my opinion, it is not Java developers’ job to ask users to install Java runtime. It’s Sun’s job. It’s true that C# requires runtime also. But Microsoft can easily make the .net framework as part of Windows. Most desktop applications run under windows not Solaris
Posted by: jdevp2 on January 31, 2007 at 03:06 PM

If I had to point something out, I would say it is the lack of buzz around Java.
Here's the latest thing that Mono folks are doing.

I read on some forum that the biggest problem with Java in general is not the language or the platform itself is getting old, but that Java folk themselves are getting old.

We have a ton of useful apps out there, but a killer app, none. Not Azureus, not Eclipse, none.

Buzz, buzz, buzz.....
Posted by: hchaudh1 on January 31, 2007 at 11:28 AM

well, multimedia support for one. if you want to make the trendiest desktop GUI using swing, you will need good multimedia support and pure java multimedia support is lagging behind all its competitors.
Posted by: walterc on January 31, 2007 at 08:54 AM

Romain: I was talking w/ Chet about this problem re: Timing Framework. the other xml type frameworks javaguy mentioned unless I'm mistaken are for quickly creating your layouts, not for "Filthy Rich Client" type of effects, which is what I'd love to see to be inline w/ Swing's competitors. W/ regards to TimingFramework, what I was discussing w/ Chet(after I suggested MouseTrigger to him) was it would be awesome to hook the TimingFramework to AffineTransform. That way you could easily scale, rotate etc w/out custom painting. But the general gist is that when we can start doing that...well then I think we are moving in the right direction to really open up the power of swing easily. Mind you I have no problems w/ custom painting :)
Posted by: sjlum on January 31, 2007 at 08:36 AM

Swing and all the layout managers are a pain to work with. I wanted to do an small application in Swing and had to resort to the new GroupLayout. All the other layout managers are a pain if you have a background in Delphi/WinForms.
Posted by: pjmlp on January 31, 2007 at 07:20 AM

javaguy44: Many other solutions have been around for years.
Posted by: gfx on January 31, 2007 at 05:02 AM

As Romain says, that is exactly the problem. Who is working on the xml type markup? I hope F3 isn't all there is
Posted by: javaguy44 on January 31, 2007 at 04:13 AM

You give for granted that Java is not the easiest and trendiest Desktop GUI.
Why? Is it just your opinion or is there any fact to support that?
All I can say is that Swing is the dominant toolkit, so people are building things with Swing, and that there're lots of Java applications out there, both Swing and SWT based.
Cheers,
Antonio
Posted by: vieiro on January 31, 2007 at 01:31 AM

Java could become the trendiest Desktop GUI out there. We have everything we need... except it takes too much time to build very cool UIs when compared to WPF, Apollo or Mac OS X's Cocoa/Core Image/Core Video/Core Graphics/Core Animation stack.
Posted by: gfx on January 30, 2007 at 06:50 PM

Sorry for my bad English...

What do you think if I promise you a new paradigm of development very near of XAML/WPF but in Java? What about developing the layout of the GUI in XML in an easy way with fully 3D support (JOGL and soft based), video on texture, MP3 streaming, DataBinding, Java pluggable code (code behind) and so on? Deploying of apps,webs or games could be made by Java Web Start..... How it sounds?

Posted by av6767

Ans: Sounds good, it is not important what programming techniques are used to improve the "Java Desktop", but desktop interface has to be Java- network (at) isolatednetworks dot com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.