Let's be careful exactly what we say... j602 is exceptionally stable. It's the most stable language development system I've come across for cross-platform development -- it was this that attracted me to J in the first place. But it makes it a hard act to follow.
The stability has been achieved by avoiding excessive facilities in the gui (jwd). It's clearly been tempting to release a J version that embraces some of the juiciest open-source opportunities for richer gui development: html and gtk. I applaud that, and want to be part of it. It would be a shame and a disappointment if this bold initiative stalls because of teething troubles with a small proportion of user's very disparate platforms. More timid developers would have released on one platform only (that having the most imaginative users), then rolled it out six months later on another platform. Yes, let's keep j602 around as a fallback, with the emphasis on "fall". But I urge the J community to assign 'j701 j602'=: (recommended ; deprecated) . Not: (none_but_the_brave ; the_rest_of_us). This will require a pretty broad migration path j602-->j701 to be hacked through the undergrowth, with the perfection of slightly depressing crutches like wd-emulation and gtk survival-guides. Less so with jhs because there's more experience in our community with html and javascript. Björn has been saying something similar recently. He's been living the part. I haven't. This is due to change shortly. Just so soon as I can take a good look at Bill's start at a wd-emulator. On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 5:20 AM, J. Patrick Harrington <[email protected]> wrote: > > Right, Chris, I can't say that isn't clear enough. > Maybe put it in a larger font ... :-) > > On Sun, 6 Feb 2011, chris burke wrote: >> On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 12:53 PM, J. Patrick Harrington >> <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> ... Maybe >>> there should be a warning to anyone who is new to J to just use >>> j602 -- at least on a Mac. >> >>> From the J download page: >> >> "... J701 introduces significant change and is for users, new or old, >> who want the challenge of the bleeding edge..." >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm >> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
