Hi, John.
Thanks for the response and the encouragement. Now that I've finally got my
browsers running, I too can announce that it's trivially easy. That is if I
forget the years of tears and sweat getting a half a dozen jdks to run from
the command line, IDEs to run at all, jdks to run from the IDEs, IDEs to run
debuggers, IDEs to place packages, IDEs to find packages, jars to jar,
browsers to run locally, browsers to run over the web, browsers to run with
extensions...
Through all of that, I can't remember a single time that I sought
information on how to accomplish a setup, found it, followed it, and
succeeded. Invariably, success pivoted on some dumb luck finding a scrap of
information in the forums, a LIST message about something else entirely, a
hint on setting up three jdks ago on two IDEs ago, or stumbling onto an
obscure item buried in an IDE menu. Sometimes, a setup began working for
completely unknown reasons. I never would find out what the problem was,
how I fixed it, or how I could repeat it. Most often the task remained
undone, overrun by events.
I'd like to spare my visitor the grief, because I have ambitions to reach
people who have no patience for any of it. Now that I've managed to get my
browsers running, I'm motivated to reconstruct the minimum steps required to
succeed and describe them in terms a layman can understand.
You wrote:
> Actually I think the average end user has it easier than the software
> developers. In a typical end user set up they should just need to
> install the JRE and then Java 3D. (they don't have the confusion of the
> SDK).
Unless they read the documentation and the instructions.
While I'm at it, I found the following alarming snippet on
http://java.sun.com/products/plugin/1.3/troubleshooting.faq.html
------------------------------
Q: We are trying to use Java 3D with Java Plug-in Software, but it doesn't
work at all. Why?
A: Java 3D comes with various packages. Installing it incorrectly may
inadvertently disable Java Plug-in Software or cause it to fail. Follow
these general instructions for using Java 3D and Java Plug-in Software:
Install Java Plug-in Software first.
Install Java 3D in a new directory. Do not install it over the existing Java
2 SDK, Standard Edition/JRE. See this page for installation instructions.
In the Java Plug-in Software control panel, switch the JRE to the one that
came with Java 3D.
Download the HTML Converter 1.3 and convert the Java 3D demo pages.
The Java 3D demos should now run within Java Plug-in Software.
-------------------------------------------
Does this mean that a JRE COMES WITH Java3D? Does it install itself as a
plug-in?
What are the implications for a user who wants to run Java3D on a clean
machine?
Should he remove the plug-in that he's led to by the converted web page?
"switch the JRE to the one that came with Java 3D." How am I supposed to
describe this to him? Do I tell him to try them all and see which one
works? I'd be so embarrassed. My plug-in sees four JREs plus the default.
They all run Java3D now, but only after a huge amount of random fiddling
that I doubt that I could reproduce.
"Download the HTML Converter 1.3 and convert the Java 3D demo pages." This
is an absolutely baffling suggestion. This is for a naive visitor? I can't
get HTMLConverter running myself (but that's another thread), and I have to
meticulously hand code my HTML. Why isn't there a suite of test applets
posted on which we can test installations?
> I agree that it's not clearly documented anywhere.
If the docs were just removed, it would be an improvement.
> I've been
> meaning to walk through the installs on one of my fresh testbed machines
> and document it but now that I understand the issues it seems trivially
> easy to me {smile}.
If you feel ambitious, try my Java2 1.3+Java3D 1.2 test page with a fresh
machine at
http://www.BrockEng.com/VMech/SimpleCrank.html
If anyone else on the list wishes to visit with a properly setup browser,
I'd appreciate the feedback. If you email me with results and suggestions,
I'll summarize to the LIST.
> Sun really should put more attention into clearly documenting the
> basics!
Well, if I can get smart enough to have an opinion, I'll take a crack at it
for the J3D FAQ. Maybe it's out there somewhere, but I certainly haven't
found it.
Thanks,
Fred Klingener
Brock Engineering
Roxbury CT
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