Kaffe and JavaSoft Compatibility

[Peter C. Mehlitz]

On Mon, 10 Aug 1998, Luke Simon wrote:
>With such a small programming team, so much was
 accomplished?!?

Actually, even more :-) We had to implement the AWT twice (since biss-only was
lacking GPL), and of course we have this Custom edition (e.g. running on DOS),
we try to make our living with..

> My
 question is, what about all of the new JDK 1.2 stuff that SUN has
planned?
 >Swing, Java3D, 2D, and the likes.  What about those little rascals? 

We are currently working on swing compatibility (which apparently doesn't work
on the AWT spec-basis, but requires a lot of "JDK-like" behavior). With some
delay (well, there is a tribute to small teams..), we will also tackle the 2D
and 3D APIs (the 2D coming first, with a very interesting approach..).

Yes, we will extend this towads 1.2, but keep a strong emphasis on the "small
and simple" principle (that has been abandoned by others..). This is what makes
it sometimes hard to implement these add-ons (e.g. swing), or to keep
compatibility (e.g. with deprecated mechs like the 1.0.2 events). I'm hoping
that the web will help out with more exotic things (APIs), we simply can't do
all at once.

> I saw a couple threads about a modified BISS-JDE.
> Saw the pics on
 >the Kaffe page too.  Please feed my hunger for a REAL full
> featured JDE!
 >Release it on the Kaffe page!!!  Please...

One of the things which have to be postponed.. I first would like to make
it free of BISS copyrights before releasing it, and I definitely would like to
integrate it with the VM (on-demand reloading of classes, memory statistics,
breakpoints and that stuff).

-- Peter