Most popular applications?

[Jim Pick]

On Fri, 2002-03-22 at 02:16, Jukka Santala wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 21 Mar 2002, Jim Pick wrote:
> > I want to compile a list of what people feel are the most important Java
> > applications that people will be using kaffe to run.
> 
> "Important" and "popular" leave bit unclear what is exactly meant, but
> I'll add a few programs of interest anyway.
> 
> http://www.xsmiles.org - "prototype" XML browser with support for multiple

That looks awesome!  I'm definitely going to try your stuff out in the
next few weeks.  :-)

I added your links to the list of applications to test on the
compatibility pages.

> We're doing lot of research & development on these, and due to its
> portability, API support and conformance Kaffe is presentlty our platform
> of choice both on XML-devices and DigiTV branches. (At Helsinki Institute
> for Information Technology / Helsinki University of Technology)

Cool.  :-)

> As stated earlier, for embedded devices we aren't really looking forward
> into running Kaffe on top of huge, slow windowing systems, so the desktop
> edition doesn't seem too appealing right now. Neither does signing bunch
> of NDA's to use a properietary VM such as KaffePro for research purposes,
> no offence meant :)

No problem - KaffePro is really for commercial customers.  For research,
I want Kaffe.org's kaffe to be the one everybody uses.
 
> However, since so many research projects here rely on Kaffe w/framebuffer,
> we've formed an improptu alliance between the major research projects to
> look into improving the PocketLinux Kaffe implementation. Speaking purely
> personally, I wouldn't mind seeing framebuffer GUI added to the desktop
> edition, or the GPL released versions merged, and that's something we're
> looking at.

After we get 1.0.7 out, we'll be into development mode, and one of the
key goals is going to be to merge the PocketLinux kaffe stuff into the
kaffe.org version.  I'd like to see the framebuffer stuff go in. 
Practically speaking, merging all the different AWTs together probably
isn't completely doable or even desirable.  What I'm thinking of doing
is providing an interactive configuration utility (eg. "make menuconfig"
in the Linux kernel) which allows the end user to select which library
implementations they want to use (eg. for AWT, they may get to choose
from Classpath AWT, classic Kaffe X11 AWT, PocketLinux lightweight
framebuffer AWT, Gtk AWT, Qt AWT, Win32 AWT, etc.).  I've done some work
on our internal version in this direction, with a new build system, and
using CML2 for the interactive bit.  I'd love to see that being used for
the kaffe.org version.  I'll introduce my ideas more formally on the
list when the time comes.

As far as people's expectations go, I should clarify some things.  I'm
getting paid to just do the virtual machine bits at Transvirtual, not
the graphics.  Don't expect a whole lot of support for the framebuffer
(no-native-wm) AWT Transvirtual released as part of Pocketlinux.  Since
the time of Pocketlinux, Transvirtual has done a fair amount of work in
that area (eg. making themeing more portable, the new XGL framebuffer
libraries, compatibility fixes, etc.).  All the new work Transvirtual is
doing in that area is proprietary, so it probably won't be released,
unless a business decision is made to do so (unlikely at this time).  So
the old stuff is basically unsupported, and the community will have to
do the work itself.

Cheers,

 - Jim