[Java-gnome-developer] Re: [Sablevm-developer] Re: [kaffe] Ja va-Gnome: jni or cni

[Jeffrey Morgan]

> Mark,
> 
> chris at kiffer.eunet.be said:
> > On Thursday 11 March 2004 18:44, Mark Howard wrote:
> > > The big question is: should we switch to CNI?
> >
> > No.
> 
> I agree with Chris 100%.  [Or perhaps I should say 110% :-)]
> 
> JNI is the standard for portably calling C / C++ from Java.  It works
> well enough for the job.  Implementing CNI instead does your users a
> major disservice by tying them to Java implementations that support
> CNI.   
> 
> Actually, I reckon that the same argument applies to java-gnome in
> general.  Anyone who uses the java-gnome libraries in a GUI-based Java
> application is risking tying that application into GNOME.  By 
> contrast,
> if they use Swing or SWT, they can easily port the 
> application across a
> wide range of supported platforms.

But this is the point of the whole project.  Our goal is to target
gnome and gtk environments.  java-gnome is for writing applications
that target the gnome desktop environment.  As a result, we have
many classes that are designed to provide the developer the type
of integration that they would expect on a platform if they were
using c or c++.

> 
> [There is a counter-argument that says that java-gnome will maximise
> integration with GNOME's look and feel, etc.  My counter to 
> that is that
> this is not the highest priority for most Java projects.  For most,
> immediate portability or avoiding platform/vendor tie-in are 
> equally, if
> not more important.  Otherwise they'd probably be using .NET on a
> Windows machine ;-)]
> 
> I'm assuming, without any evidence, that the java-gnome plans don't
> include backends to graphics libraries other than the 
> gtk/gnome ones. If
> that's wrong, java-gnome is not quite so bad.  However, I still reckon
> it would be risky to use java-gnome (instead of Swing or SWT) 
> in a major
> Java development project.  (For a start, the project would be 
> screwed if
> java-gnome faded away.)  IMO, this really leaves java-gnome 
> as only being 
> useful for minor Java applications for the GNOME platform.  At which 
> point I would ask myself "why bother"?
> 
> I note your issues re JNI vs CNI performance, code size and ease of
> development. I suggest that the first two issues will rarely 
> much to the
> end users of software that uses java-gnome.  The third issue will only
> impact on the tiny group of people who develop and maintain java-gnome
> itself.  Most developers should be working in the pure Java space.
> [Think of it this way ... if Sun had perceived these to be 
> major issues
> for their customers, they would probably have replaced JNI by now!]
> 
> -- Steve
> 
> 
> 
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