[kaffe] Sun classes

Jukka Santala jsantala@tml.hut.fi
Mon, 20 May 2002 17:24:49 +0300 (EEST)


On Mon, 20 May 2002, Dalibor Topic wrote:
> As far as I know the Classpath project (and gcj) have
> a Java 2d implementation, you might want to look
> there. Finally, you could still write your own :)
> Especially if you are interested in hacking on kaffe.

Last I checked, Classpath & gcj didn't even have working AWT, so I kinda
doubt that. Certainly it's on their agenda. Also, since Java2D requires
quite deep VM/JNI level integration (What with all alpha-channels etc.)
it's impossible to get working Java2D in Kaffe by swapping bytecode only.
At least the Custom Edition doesn't even have backend graphics libraries
that could support Java2D; I suspect this is more or less the case with
the desktop edition too, ie. all the internals are missing.

It would certainly be of interest to get it working, though; SVG for
example is specsed almost exactly to Java2D API, and I'm not sure the new
SVG 1.1 version is going to improve things that much. If you have the
choice (Ie. it's not by specification or similiar), it would probably make
more sense to just not use Java2D API in your own programs, though. I
think there are no non-Sun implementations out right now, and it'll
certainly be a pain to add to whatever JDK you're using at any given time.
(Unless we build all free JDK's capable to use something like Classpath
and abandon all the work put into non-Classpath classlibs, until a
Classpath v2 comes along forcing abandoning that implementation...;)

 -Jukka Santala