joustlog

I wrote in a previous entry about the experience I had just downloading and installing Eclipse. This entry continues that story, starting with my first run of Eclipse.

The First Run

Running Eclipse for the first time left me sitting for a while, maybe a minute or two, without any kind of progress bar or status messages. I’m on a 2-year-old laptop, but I think 512MB RAM and 1.8Ghz P4 should be sufficient for starting up in less time than that.
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Florian Bomers, I believe former Sun employee, has announced that Sun has released its own free MP3 decoder library. It works in both Java Media Framework and JavaSound, and Florian says it’s very fast and it’s compatible with JavaLayer decoder.

I talk a lot about IDEA and how much I love it, but I haven’t used Eclipse for more than a few minutes in a year or two. I’ve read a lot about Eclipse and I’ve followed the “New & Noteworthy” for almost every milestone, but I haven’t actually used it since probably version 2.0 or earlier. I thought I should put my money in my mouth and use Eclipse so I can have a little more backup for my claims about IDEA.

So, I tried Eclipse 3.1 M2 today and so far it isn’t going well.
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I’m looking for a Java-based templating engine whose binary jar is under 100kb, and which will allow me to convert simple “${x.thing()} y {z}” string, to a string with the variable “x” replaced with the result of x.thing(), and “z” with some other value I specify at runtime.

I do not want to generate HTML files or files at all, this is all in memory. I’ve looked around a little, and all of the templating engines I can find are either too large (like Velocity) or designed for webpages (like MiniTemplator).

If anyone could point out a templating engine like this, that would be great.

I’ve had problems with the Jakarta website for as long as I can remember. It’s hard to navigate and it’s hard to find documentation. Here are a few of the problems with just the download part:

• The only download page is a big list of all of the Jakarta projects
• The individual projects (like JK2 connector) just link to that single download page, without even scrolling me down to the project I clicked from.
• The projects are mostly in alphabetical order, but “JK2″ project is under “T” for Tomcat
• Each download link brings me to a list of all the filenames, and each file has a corresponding <file>.asc file for no obvious reason
• The Description for all of the files, even the .asc files, is “Jakarta project.”

I think it’s been this way for way too long, considering how easily it could be improved.

I filed a lot of Java Web Start and Swing bugs recently. Most of them have been accepted, but some have been marked “Will not fix,” and unreasonably in my opinion:

• Do not show “Java loading…” window during startup for offline applications - if Java applications are supposed to look like normal applications, it doesn’t help that every time you start a WebStart-based application you see an ugly gray “Java Loading…” window in the middle of your screen.

  The reasoning from the evaluator for closing the bug is that you can specify an empty JPEG image as the application’s splash screen. I think this is not a valid reason; a developer should have to do as little as possible to get his or her application to blend in with the user’s desktop.

  Also, if a developer really wanted that Java Loading splash screen, he or she could simply set that image as the application’s splash screen.

• User should be given a choice as to where shortcuts are created - in every native Windows installer that I can remember using, you are asked with checkboxes whether you want shortcuts on the desktop and/or in the start menu.

  I don’t know what the developer was thinking to mark this bug as “Not a bug.” Of course it’s not a bug, it’s a Request For Enhancement, and I think it’s a valid one. I’ve shown my college class scheduling application to about five people, and one of those five already has complained because he wanted start menu shortcuts, but not a desktop shortcut.

It’s frustrating that Sun doesn’t provide a means of contesting a resolution of a bug. Bugzilla lets you mark a bug as REOPENED if you reported it, which is very helpful especially when the developer misunderstood the original request.

Does anyone else think these are bad ideas, and should not be fixed? Is it just me?

Leif Samuelsson from Sun’s Swing team joined the WinLAF developer mailing list today. He said:

“I have the main responsibility for the Windows L&F in J2SE at Sun, and I intend to monitor this project more closely to get input and ideas for fixes that may be useful for our development. I will also try to provide status on specific issues, and participate in discussions on how to best fix them. “

I think this will bring good things to both Swing and the WinLAF project.

Scott Violet from the Swing Team has responded to some questions that I posted about the Windows Look & Feel to the JavaDesktop Swing Forums, and for me it clears some things up. You should read it for yourself, but here are some interesting quotes:

• “We are going to try and work more closely with [the WinLAF project] going forward.”
• On how much of Tiger development was on Windows L&F issues:
  “Not enough! Seriously though, it was likely around 20%.”
• On releasing Windows L&F source code, to allow for more complete custom implementations to be distributed with applications:
  “We’ve kicked this idea around, but because of dependancies you would
  only be able to build it on the latest J2SE. In other words it
  wouldn’t be of much benefit.”

You can read the whole conversation at The JavaDesktop Swing &AWT forums, and post your own questions or comments about the Windows L&F.