Jesktop is application thats sits on Apache's Avalon and provides a (one day) full featured GUI OS experience in 100% Java, needs a command line environment.
In one sentance, I'm hoping Ant is adaptable to work in a 100% java console and work detatched from the real OS provided (System.in & System.out) command line. --- About Jesktop. Take a look at http://www.jesktop.org The implementation is APL. The interfaces needed for import into "hosted" applications are BSD public licensed which as far as I know is compatible with APL and GPL. Being approved as a hosting enironment for GPL is quite important as some GPL gui apps have been ported to Jesktop and they can't (according to received wisdom from RMS) import code that is licensed as APL (at least not for the time being). We already have a command envrironment that supports it's command set being typed to the console and running script files. It's beanshell and we can run multiple instances all doing the different things concurrently. If you have already looked at beanshell, you'll know it's very cool. The trouble is it does not support Ant taskdefs, the xmlized syntax or run Ant commands from it's command line. --- What I am looking for is replacing the layer that links Ant commands to the host OS provided command line with one that adapts to beanshell's (or a new console tool's) command line. There are some other problems too in that ANT should not hog the AWT thread if that's when command invokation requests come though. I am also hoping in the long run to have something along the lines of command completion for ant commands. Imagine I type into the command line... copy fred.txt /home/flintstones/ .. and press some key that invokes a syntax parser and the above morphs to : <copy file="fred.txt" todir="/home/flintstones" /> .. for subsequent editing or execution, this would help to establish ANT comand syntax as THE standard for both executable scripts and invokable commands. If the same XMLized for could be "prompted" in a suitable enhanced editor or command line a real GUI could pop up temporarity to allow full blown selection of elements/attributes including offering a FileChooser where appropriate. Grand plans! What's thought of this? Also if anyone with good Swing skills is inclined, some help building Jesktop would be appreciated. We're, suprise suprise, using Ant for building and xdocs (stylebook taskdef) for documentation. - PH __________________________________________________ Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
