Thanks a lot for your opinions! I am going to react to one recurring theme in this email...
2018-03-12 16:59 GMT+01:00 Jaroslav Tulach <[email protected]>: > > Forget about AWT, Swing and JavaFX - the future is HTML. In case you still > care about Java, then your future should be Apache HTML/Java API! > > First of all I have to admit it drives me mad, how incapable I am in communicating these ideas. How could I be the initial architect of NetBeans, when I am not able to explain what HTML/Java API is beneficial for? Or was I just the architect and there had to be others to handle the public relations? Or was the success of NetBeans (Platform) just an unrepeatable luck? Anyway, there have been few references to Electron framework in your reactions to my email: > There is nothing better than creating UIs with HTML and use them everywhere, like in the Electron Framework. > ... look into electron apps ... like VS Code and I think this is a big Player and you can see, that it performs very well and it is performant as hell. OK, I can see people are looking (or at least googling) for alternatives to current UIs. Yes, I agree HTML is one of (the best) options there - especially if you want real WORA - e.g. also target plain browser. However I have to say the following sentence is just increasing my internal suffering... > heavyweight, ...(but)... the open source nature ... of Electron make it potentially an attractive option for mixed Java/HTML applications We - the NetBeans (incubating) project - have such technology, it is HTML/Java API. It has been intentionally designed to support mixed Java/HTML applications. We are the community of the project! But instead of improving what we have and making it work for our NetBeans IDE purposes (which is certainly simpler than trying to use Electron designed for something different; more on that later), we are looking at other project and admiring their "open source nature"! Am I really doing so poor job that people aren't willing to dedicate 10 minutes of their personal time to try HTML/Java API in action? Rather they are looking... > I was looking at an example project using Vaadin running inside Electron recently. Have you tried this approach with HTML/Java? ...and trying Electron samples! C'mon do you have recent version of NetBeans 9.0? Then just select "New Project", "JavaFX", "Java HTML5 Application" click through the wizard and choose Run/Debug on the generated project! How much did it take? 30s of activity[1]? > I keep trying to find some time to experiment with Apache HTML/Java and wondered at the feasibility of reworking that Electron example with it? If you give the NetBeans 9.0 support for HTML/Java UI a try, you see (when using for example the Visual archetype) that rewriting visually rich Electron application like https://github.com/electron/simple-samples/tree/master/activity-monitor should be a piece of cake. I consider it patriotic to try NetBeans own solution first. Am I completely off? > Demo app showing all kind of features a given system allows me to use. Like a toolbox, which I run and say - hey that's the component I need. Is there something like this for the HTML+JAVA api? The visual archetype offers canvas sample, line charts and pie charts sample and interactive GeoBase application. Isn't that enough? Then there is another CRUD like archetype, as well as simple MVVM sample. All of them are just few clicks from your reach ("New Project", "JavaFX", "Java HTML5 Application"), is that enough to get started? I hope it is. Guys, please, instead of drinking your morning coffee, click though the wizard and see Apache HTML/Java API in action yourself. I'll be thankful for comments. As confessed, I am depressed by my inability to communicate what our HTML/Java project can do for you. It may not be 100% perfect fit, but it is so close to what you guys need.... Shame on me for not being able to explain that! Thanks. -js PS: Now let's look at what Electron isn't and why HTML/Java shall be a better choice: > I am sure electron is good, but my personal preference is to not use a web ide. I share your feelings. However we are not talking about Web IDE. We are talking about reusing rendering pipeline that is behind HTML. Sure, this pipeline is used in browsers, but that doesn't mean browser == the rendering pipeline. Browser is much more and we don't need all of that. > Think about ... what Electron actually *is* ... Electron is the rendering pipeline, plus a bunch of libraries for dealing with the surrounding operating system, plus JavaScript specific build system. But, when writing Java application, why would you need those libraries? Java has pretty rich operating system API (think of java.nio, missing in JavaScript) and there are plenty of libraries to deal with other aspects of OS integration. Why would you need npm build system? Java has other, well established build systems as well. Conclusion? The only thing you'd want from Electron is the rendering pipeline. But then: What is the HTML/Java project goal? To be a portable abstraction over such pipeline! I would conclude that you don't want to look at Electron to begin with! Again, I am ashamed of not being able to get my message thru... > Funfact: Without JavaFX you don't have a HTML5 renderer The truth is that we already have our existing Swing/JavaFX applications and if we want to move towards HTML, we need an incremental way to migrate, rather than big bang rewrite of everything. That is not at all what Electron can give you! On the other hand that is something HTML/Java API shines at. Because of using the JavaFX renderer (behind the scene), we can easily mix the Swing and HTML UI in NetBeans IDE[2]. In any case having the Swing/HTML UI interop is real benefit for us. We can mix both types of the UI right now. By having the renderer as an implementation detail, we can replace it with better one in the future. PPS: Have any of the above (or below) convinced you to give HTML/Java API a try or did I failed again to explain its benefits? [1] Plus few minutes of Maven plugins initial download time... [2] Have you noticed that the wizard ("New Project", "JavaFX", "Java HTML5 Application") is written in HTML UI? I hope the transition from the Swing to the HTML UI was smooth enough to not be really noticeable.
