Feeling sick

I hate being sick. Soar throat and a headache. Cannot concentrate. And there are so many exciting things going on. So what I do is I look at the pretty pictures from Grzegorz Prokopski showing Free Swing on SableVM and from Jim Huang showing JSDL on Kaffe. And read about the most amazing news from Steven Augart: Jikes RVM is now fully free software! And there are so many interesting discussions on the GNU Classpath mailinglist and on Planet Classpath…

Please, I want to be better again, and play outside with the new and shiny code…

GNU Classpath

Been very happy with the latest release. Many additions (java.util.regexp/gnu.regexp, java.net.URI, javax.swing.undo, java.awt.geom.CubicCurve2D/QuadCurve2D cubic and quadratic equation solving, javax.print.attribute.standard), i/o speed improvements (BufferedReader and ObjectInputStream). Lots of java.awt and gtk+ peer improvements. Start of embedded window support (browsers). Some Swing work. And the normal list of enhancements and bug fixes.

Also wrote a GNU Classpath 0.08 - How to use it overview. Hopefully it explains the interaction between GNU Classpath, gcj, kaffe, compilers, editors, runtime environments, extension libraries and other building blocks. It should get people quickly and easily up to speed with GNU Classpath hacking.

Patrik Reali made a nice FOSDEM’04 page which describes the last GNU Classpath hacker meeting. It includes reports and presentations given at FOSDEM on the current status and future plans.

Lost in translation

Put Japan on the list of places to visit. The loneliness of people in a foreign country was nicely captured. But the interaction between the two main characters didn’t really move me.

Do we need to make a choice?

hp wrote an article on
Java, Mono, or C++? which he hopes will be the start of a discussion about high-level language technologies and how they can influence the development of the creation of applications for the free desktops. I am happy because he seems to know what he is talking about (although he seems to ignore KDE, Kaffe OpenVM, GNUstep and Objective C which share some of the goals he is talking about). But GNU Classpath is mentioned a couple of times. The most interesting thing to me was a reference to an old proposal for a shared runtime. I wonder how the new GNU gcj ABI/Pluggable JIT design will fit into something like that.