On Wed, 24 May 2000, Pablo Vasques Bravo-Villalba wrote:
> If different toolkits could use the same data
> (e.g., even importing final game data), we can
> address some specific tool's weakness with some
> external utility.
Yes, that's possible. But it would be better if people could simply write
code that fixes the weakness for the existing tool. That way you don't have
to run a series of programs to get your work done.
Using multiple programs is not necessarily a bad thing though, as long as
you have scripting...
> > Java AWT adapts itself to the platform it runs on. So for example radio
> > buttons on Windows look like Windows radio buttons and radio buttons on
> > Unix look like Motif radio buttons.
>
> That sounds nice. I'd like to see it in Mac too. `:)
It should work on Mac as well. But it's been a while since I saw a Mac...
By the way, did you notice that iMacs are very often shown on TV? In
series, video clips etc. I see them on TV quite often, but I don't know
any real life person who has one.
> I'm almost buying your
> Java idea... Which Java development environment would
> you recommend -- for Linux or Windows? :)
I always use a command line compiler plus a separate syntax highlighting
editor. That approach works in both Linux or Windows.
There are also integrated Java developer environments in Windows, Linux or
Java. I don't like them, but someone who does can use them.
> > Java AWT, if used properly, will look pretty much like the OS you're using
> > it under.
>
> Very nice. Is it fast enough? :)
Yes.
It's fast enough for any normal task. It is not yet fast enough for MSX
emulation: JavaMSX runs slower than a real MSX (maybe not if you have a 1
GHz PC). But it's fast enough for an editor or for a parser or for a
converter.
> > I don't think there are much, but there will be a few. And if they can use
> > the toolkit, that's a bonus.
>
> You're right. I'm just sorry because I can't contribute
> for a Java toolkit... <:)
You can always contribute ideas, no matter what implementation is chosen.
The file format specifications should be independant of the implementation,
so you can contribute to that too. The design for the editor should also
be independant of the language used to implement it.
And learning a little Java is easy. So you can add to an open source
toolkit, even if you cannot program the whole thing.
> > > But I'm not a (good) programmer anyway.
> > I really like Java. It saved me from those horrible pointers. It saved me
> (...)
> > parallellism).
>
> Is it really fast and stable? What kind of running
> environment we must have?
The speed depends on how good the virtual machine is. The lastest virtual
machines from Sun, Microsoft and IBM are fast. My impression is that Java is
only about 20% slower than C. I don't have any benchmarks available, but in
any case the speed difference is not dramatic.
I once ported a Turbo Pascal source to Java and it became faster (probably
because Java runs in 32 bit mode and TP in 16 bit mode). Java is way faster
than QuickBASIC (although that says more about QuickBASIC than about Java:
despite it's name QuickBASIC isn't quick at all).
Note that there are two things slow about Java: the virtual machine takes a
while to start up and just-in-time compilation takes a while. But these
slowdowns only occur when starting the program. How long the delay is,
depends on the virtual machine (IBM's is the fastest I saw). On my machine
(P2/400), it's about half a second (VM startup + JIT compilation).
The recent Java virtual machines are stable. The new additions (like Swing)
contain bugs, but the Java core is good. And programs written in Java are
more stable than programs in most other languages, I wrote the reasons in
one of the previous mails.
> > MCCW is made with Java tools. They are command line tools that generate the
> > HTML code, so they are not present in the web pages. But they are very good
>
> Command line tools? How? I'd like to have
> something like that! :)
It's called XSLT: XSL Transformations, where XSL is XML Style Language and
XML is eXtensible Markup Language.
How it works:
There is a document (article) in XML format, this document only contains
the text itself and XML codes describing what the structure of the text is
(title, paragraph, paragraph heading).
There is also a layout description (style sheet) in XSL format, this
describes how the document should be layouted. For example, the title
should appear as the HTML document title ("<TITLE>" tag), as well as on
top of the page in a large bold font.
There are two tools: one XML parser and one XSLT implementation. The XSLT
implementation uses the XML parser to read the XML and XSL files (XSL is
itself an XML document). After processing, it produces a neat HTML file
with the right text and the right layout.
The advantage of this approach is in splitting the layout from the text
itself. The same principle of styles is used by for example MS Word. You
can change layout without having to change the text and vice versa. You
don't have to worry about layout when you write an article, you can focus
on the article itself. The XML document is also more readable because the
document structure tags are a lot more compact than layout tags.
And the advantage of Java is that Manuel can run the converter on the
university Sun machines while I can run the same converter on my Linux box.
The tools are free (no money, open source and not very restrictive
license). If anyone is interested, mail me privately and I'll give you
URLs and some examples.
> I meant tools. I changed my words to reflect
> my thoughts... `:) But really, I never saw a
> Java tool.
I am working on two MSX related Java tools (compressor and assembler), but
they're not finished yet. Also, the LHA-PMA prototype is made in Java. And
I have some small programs, like a library file creator and the tools used
to translate Kyokugen.
Bye,
Maarten
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