> The way I see it, there is no reason to create new low-level Java
> libraries. It is a dead or dying platform, and good riddance. Awful
> language to work with, with over-designed interfaces and horrible
> performance. And it's not even that portable! There's a reason Java's
> tagline was twisted to "write once, debug everywhere". </tangent>
>
> Bundling the CG-3 C/C++ library with a Java application has been done, so
> we know that works. If better APIs are needed to make it easier, I can add
> those. Maintaining a 2nd implementation in Java would be very expensive or
> simply lag behind by years.
>
It's funny to read this when we are talking about lttoolbox-java, a Java
port of the Apertium runtime. I guess that exactly the same could be said
about it: maintaining a 2nd implementation of Apertium is pointless, Java
sucks, blablabla. But I think that it has proved to be useful, hasn't it?
In fact, it is thanks to it that we have an Android app, and we wouldn't
even be having this discussion without it. This is why I'm not too
convinced about the idea of using native CG-3 from lttoolbox-java. If you
want to go the C++ way, the most logical decision as I see it would be to
use the C++ version of Apertium as well. Using its Java port would sound
like a contradiction for me.
But, well, if it is a viable solution and far the easiest one to implement
and maintain, it obviously looks like the right decision to take... Also, I
didn't thought that making it work in desktop (and, in particular, in
Windows) would be that straightforward, so this makes things better than
what I said.
As for the offline vs online discussion, I agree with Jacob that the
average user, in general, wouldn't care too much about the translations
being done in the device or in the cloud. But it is also true that most of
the people wouldn't bother about Apertium at all when they have Google
Translate... We have to offer something new or different, and I think that
offline mode can be a big selling point here (I know that Google supports
offline translation as well, but it doesn't perform as well as online
translation, packages are huge, no offline OCR...). And considering that
the web service has been down for over a month now, I would say that
nothing serious can rely on it...
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