Re: Dropping support for 1.3 (was Re: PropertySets)

[Peter B. West]

J.Pietschmann wrote:
Chris Bowditch wrote:

The main thing to bear in mind is that a few platforms dont support 
the later versions of Java. This will mean excluding those users from 
deploying FOP on their production servers and mainframes.


Well. Java 1.4 has some added goodies, in particular nestable exceptions
which will make problem tracking much easier, the BIDI support, other AWT
fixes and extensions and JCE by default (people will still have to get a
RC4 provider though :-/).
And 1.4 has java.util.logging and java.util.prefs.

--
Peter B. West 

Re: Dropping support for 1.3 (was Re: PropertySets)

[Christian Geisert]

J.Pietschmann wrote:

[..]

Acutually I doubt FOP 0.20.5 will run completely in an 1.2 environment.
The binary is compiled with 1.4.1, and I vaguely remember compiling
No, with 1.3

problems already for 0.20.4 on 1.2.
See http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=fop-dev&m=102372166019810&w=2

Christian

Re: Dropping support for 1.3 (was Re: PropertySets)

[J.Pietschmann]

Chris Bowditch wrote:
The main thing to bear in mind is that a few platforms dont support the 
later versions of Java. This will mean excluding those users from 
deploying FOP on their production servers and mainframes.
Well. Java 1.4 has some added goodies, in particular nestable exceptions
which will make problem tracking much easier, the BIDI support, other AWT
fixes and extensions and JCE by default (people will still have to get a
RC4 provider though :-/).

I did a quick search of the archives and found the thread that decrees 
1.1 will no longer be supported and the minimum JDK is 1.2.
Acutually I doubt FOP 0.20.5 will run completely in an 1.2 environment.
The binary is compiled with 1.4.1, and I vaguely remember compiling
problems already for 0.20.4 on 1.2.
J.PIetschmann

Re: Dropping support for 1.3 (was Re: PropertySets)

[Clay Leeds]

Thanks for clarifying this Chris. I wasn't certain whether Glen was 
referring to FOP *development* requiring Java 1.4 SDK or FOP 
*deployment* requiring 1.4. It appears you are thinking he's referring 
to *deployment* as well, so my thought process isn't totally off-base.

FOP requires Java 1.2.x runtime or later. However, in my experience, 
I've found bugs in AWT font rendering (mainly with kerning) which is 
fixed with Sun Java 1.4.1 or later (actually ~1.4.0_03+ if I'm not 
mistaken) or IBM Java 1.3.0+.

In my case, we have some rather large users (one client processes 
300,000+ pdfs and printouts per month) running FOP on AIX 4.3 running 
Java 1.3.0 (build 1.3.0, J2RE IBM), and I doubt my company can get them 
to switch. Thankfully, fop-0.20.4 works great for them, so it may be 
moot for them. However, while I should be able to get them to move to 
fop-0.20.5 after extensive testing, I'll have trouble getting them to 
upgrade their Java runtime.

Web Maestro Clay

On Jan 6, 2004, at 1:16 AM, Chris Bowditch wrote:
Glen Mazza wrote:

It's probably not *yet* time to set 1.4 as the JDK to
code against for 1.0, but it probably wouldn't be much
of a disaster if we did so either.
The main thing to bear in mind is that a few platforms dont support 
the later versions of Java. This will mean excluding those users from 
deploying FOP on their production servers and mainframes.

By the time 1.0 is release-ready, 90% will either be
on 1.4 or will be upgrading to 1.4 along with the
upgrade of FOP 0.20.x to 1.0.  The remaining 10% can
linger on 0.20.x for the few extra months they need.
I did a quick search of the archives and found the thread that decrees 
1.1 will no longer be supported and the minimum JDK is 1.2. AFAICT 1.2 
has never officially been dropped. It is an old/long thread, but it 
may be useful in making a decision here.

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=fop-dev&m=100106134012939&w=2

I'm not inclined to recode it (Finn's code anyway ;),
and Peter has more important things to focus on as
well.  Let's concentrate on making that 90% of users
overjoyed right now--and the other 10% in a few more
months after that.
Its not a show stopper for me, but I think we should keep use of 1.4 
specific methods to a minimum until we agree that 1.3 is dead.

Any other opinions, comments?

Chris

Dropping support for 1.3 (was Re: PropertySets)

[Chris Bowditch]

Glen Mazza wrote:

It's probably not *yet* time to set 1.4 as the JDK to
code against for 1.0, but it probably wouldn't be much
of a disaster if we did so either.
The main thing to bear in mind is that a few platforms dont support the 
later versions of Java. This will mean excluding those users from 
deploying FOP on their production servers and mainframes.

By the time 1.0 is release-ready, 90% will either be
on 1.4 or will be upgrading to 1.4 along with the
upgrade of FOP 0.20.x to 1.0.  The remaining 10% can
linger on 0.20.x for the few extra months they need.  
I did a quick search of the archives and found the thread that decrees 
1.1 will no longer be supported and the minimum JDK is 1.2. AFAICT 1.2 
has never officially been dropped. It is an old/long thread, but it may 
be useful in making a decision here.

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=fop-dev&m=100106134012939&w=2

I'm not inclined to recode it (Finn's code anyway ;),
and Peter has more important things to focus on as
well.  Let's concentrate on making that 90% of users
overjoyed right now--and the other 10% in a few more
months after that.
Its not a show stopper for me, but I think we should keep use of 1.4 
specific methods to a minimum until we agree that 1.3 is dead.

Any other opinions, comments?

Chris