More to the point if java is being chosen as a simple means for cross platform deployment then jni suddenly makes this much more complicated. You suddenly go from one distribution to n of them :(
Yes. I'm involved with a Java project. The language was chosen by the person that pays the bills. He chose Java for cross-platform. Laudable. Except that in 1996/97 we wanted a speech synth and could only get one on Windows and we had to write a JNI wrapper for it. Only in the last year or so has it become feasible to even consider dumping the existing implementation and going for a new Java based speech synth, and then there are lots of implementation specific things about speech engines that make a real mess of things.
Its a shame, but to do anything advanced with a cross-platform language in its early stages, you are almost certainly never going to get true cross platform as you have to write something specific for each platform.
The same will be true of .NET until proper support for .NET is available on Unix/Linux/Mac.
Stephen -- Stephen Kellett Object Media Limited http://www.objmedia.demon.co.uk RSI Information: http://www.objmedia.demon.co.uk/rsi.html To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
