Author: The Great Java

Eclipse RCP and Swing

To say the documentation for Eclipse release 3 is sparse would be generous! I was able to get existing swing code working as a plug-in by creating a view, and then using the SWT_AWT class to create an AWT frame I could add my existing swing code UI to. Worked like a charm save a few null pointer exceptions in the console that had no effect on use. Cool stuff but….

Ascending Glory Descended

Well I didn’t think it would last but…. this was quick.

News report I heard said it was under captialized. I think there were a lot of other issues but that will kill a new struggling business quite fast. Plus hard to get investors as a non-profit.

Eclipse RCP

The Eclipse IDE has made a big change in the 3.0 release. The framework used for the plug-in model, and the system services have been “unbolted” from the IDE. This new layer is called the Rich Client Platform (RCP). After spending a few days going through the plug-in class material, reading doc, and writing sample code I’ve convinced of one thing – it could be easier. The documentation is lacking. The only online tutorials for RCP are not real useful, but they do show the most complicated Hello World sample I’ve ever seen! That being said, I like it and am starting to use it for the card game platform. Is it better than NetBeans for RC? I don’t know. So far the widget library (SWT) has made me want to use the Swing widget library, which I’ve never liked. Time will tell…

Jacksonville IL Coffeeshops

Went up to Jacksonville, IL for my Dad’s retirement party. Decided to visit both the new coffeeshops in town while I was there.

1) Shop #1. Old wonderful 3 story building in old town. Unfortunately old town is not very busy. The shop used home equipment (Capresso brewers) and a home superautomatic espresso machine. The grinder looked like a mazzer mini. Coffee was decent, probably not fresh roasted. Quality of foam wasn’t great. Closed on Sunday and Monday and doesn’t open until 8AM???? How they’ll pay that A/C bill in the summer I don’t know!

2) Shop #2. On the main strip and gets a lot of drive by traffic. Looked like a sub shop on the inside with a roaster in the corner and a small band area in another. Espresso machine was filthy with cooked on milk 3 inches up the wand (preparation problem). No crema on the espresso I didn’t drink 🙂 Had some lunchtime activity but I’d be surprised if they take in more than $700/day. According to my family it is popular on the weekend with the teens since they have a lot of music.

Happy retirement Dad…!

Prepackaged Goods

Wow, PHP, Apache, MySQL, and other useful stuff all prepackaged and configured for multiple platforms. I love open source.
http://www.apachefriends.org/xampp-en.html was easy to install on XP. I ran an install script and started the server. I installed OSCommerce in 5 minutes! server, database, and shopping cart platform all installed in under 10 minutes. Wow. And with PHP I can take the site back and forth b/w Linux (where my web hosting is) to my machine. And it’s not even written in Java!

Tiger!

Met with Calvin Austin today who is the spec lead for J2SE 1.5. Gave a presentation at work and spent time discussing the JRE and 1.5. with him A lot of interesting features in 1.5. Some like autoboxing should have been added years ago. Others like metadata look a bit dangerous but I like the ability to have something like this:

public String @remote getName() {}

The @remote is a metadata tag that could be used to automatically create web services proxy/stub code. This would save going through wizards, or implementing bizare interface classes to hook into a middleware framework. While simple, I think this will revolutionize a lot of Java.

More on Tiger at… http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5/