Glen Mazza wrote:
<snip/>
BTW, are we losing potential committers due to FOP 1.0 supporting JDK
1.3? We haven't heard much from Renaud since you asked him to maintain
some special 1.3-only graphics package that we otherwise wouldn't need
to have. I want to make sure we didn't lose him to a 1.4/1.5 project
because he couldn't afford to hurt his skill sets by working on 1.3. If
we did, IMO it would be better for the 1.3 users to stay on 0.20.5 so
the 1.4 users can have the benefits of new contributors' work in 1.0.
Your comment on channelling energy is what reminded me of this.
AntennaHouse is requiring 1.4.2+. So the time that we're spending on
that 1.3 graphics package they are presumably spending on speeding up
their SW for their (Windows, Linux, HP, Solaris) user base. Are they
doing a better job of channelling energy than we are? Are they doing a
better job of determining which users to concentrate on?
Dont forget that Antenna House is written in C++ with just a Java wrapper
provided for integration purposes. So you could still use Antenna House from
1.3 but calling their C++ program using another technique or write a JNI
wrapper yourself.
An interesting debate on whether to keep 1.3 compatibility or not. I agree
with Jeremias, too many platforms are stuck on ancient JDKs, so we must
support 1.3 as a minimum.
I find it strange, Glen, that you dont care whether people use FOP or not. You
have worked hard on FOP over the last couple of years. Wouldnt you be
disappointed if your work benefitted no one?
Chris
