[brailleblaster] Re: Why Java
- From: "John Gardner" <john.gardner@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <brailleblaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2010 21:01:03 -0700
Hello Alex, well you have certainly stirred up a lot of questions and
comments. That's good, and I have had private conversations with several
listers to develop a consensus on whether we should seriously consider
changing course as you suggest. The consensus is "no".
Quick summary is that isn't necessarily true that C will be faster, since it
really depends on how well it is optimized. Java has many automatic
optimizations and can often run lots faster than C. It strikes many people
that it really doesn't make sense to time-optimize this program, because it
really runs on (very slow) human time anyhow. Java is considerably faster
to write and debug code, so the price for using C would be longer
development time. Strike 1.
BrailleBlaster has always been intended to be a desktop application. To be
useful, it needs to have drivers for embossers, and these are available for
Windows, some for Macs, and some for Linux. It is not very likely that any
will be written for an iPhone, iPad, or any other embedded device, so it
makes no sense to write a Braille translator for those devices either.
Strike 2.
You say that Microsoft and Apple no longer support Java. To my knowledge,
Microsoft has never supported Java per se, but Java has always worked on
Windows. Apple's Java support has been, well peculiar at best, so many Java
lovers seem pretty happy that Apple has abandoned that support. There are
plenty of Java run-time aps that work on the Mac, so there seems to be no
problem using Java. Just have to install a JRT whether it's Windows or Mac.
Strike 3.
Thanks for making us examine our assumptions however. I appreciate your
thoughts. One should always be looking for something better. C is better
for lots of things, but as far as several of us can tell, not for
BrailleBlaster.
John Gardner
From: brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Alex Jurgensen
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2010 7:46 PM
To: brailleblaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [brailleblaster] Re: Why Java
Hi John,
C programs run nativvely on all major OS's.
WX-Widgets is like SWT for C and for sure works on the Mac with the Mac's
screen reader.
The compilers are not included on the Mac and as far as I know on Windows,
but those need to be run only once to compile the code.
What you walk away with by using C is faster exicution, and more memory
efficient code, which is important to screen reader users running on low
specification machines.
Just my $0.02 cents worth.
Regards,
Alex,
On 2010-11-04, at 5:57 PM, John J. Boyer wrote:
BrailleBlaster is intended as a desktop application. There is no reason
why it couldn't be used on a tablet. It would not be suitable for small
devices, such as phones, because these could not accommmodate the GUI
which is part of its design and a large part of its appeal. How would
you fit usable braille and print windows on a small screen?
The core libraries of BrailleBlaster are already in C. liblouis and
liblouisutdml will be the braille engine of BrailleBlaster and they can
be used without it via the file2brl command-line interface. They are the
engine; BrailleBlaster is the rest of the car.
Java was picked because of SWT, which has native C libraries that
support the UI requirements of different platforms. wxwidgets is
problematical. I have heard that it really works only for Windows. Java
provides wuicker software development and indeed a great number of
libraries that do things like display MathML.
Microsoft doesn['t provide C at the installation of its operating
systems. With Apple, you have to install the Developer tools to get C. I
think both decided that maintaining their own Java runtimes just wasn't
worth it, because there are so many third-party JREs already available.
I may be wrong on some of this, but I'm hoping we will see some messages
from More Java experts and from other decision-makers.
Yuemei said she is experienced mostly in C and Visual Basic. She did
mention Swing, but not that she had used it a lot. I think straight SWT
is the way to go.
John
On Thu, Nov 04, 2010 at 05:45:02PM -0500, qubit wrote:
Perhaps because there are java libraries available that are tempting to use
as a base? As for Apple and Microsoft, the java runtime is not being
supported by them any longer, but third parties may still develop such
support to be distributed with java programs.
Any other things I have missed?
--le
----- Original Message -----
From: Alex Jurgensen
To: Brailleblaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2010 2:25 PM
Subject: [brailleblaster] Why Java
Hi All,
I mention this now, at the relative beginning of the project, so as to
avoid unnecessary work.
Why are we using Java and not writing most of the code in C, with a true,
native UI on top, such as WX-Widgets for C. Because the code would not need
to be exicuted in a virtual machine, we would avoid many of the slowdowns
associated with Java.
We must also think about embeded devices, where the overhead of Java is
either too much for hte battery to tolleratte acceptably or there is no Java
Virtual Machine available.
Furthermore, both Microsoft and Apple have dropped support for Java within
their Operating Systems, it doesn't seem to make sense to continue coding in
Java because we may one day soon need to rewrite all of our code to aadapt
to a whole new class of machines that don't have Java Available.
I feel that if we write the core of our code into C libraries, we should be
able to bring about new UI's, such as a Cocoatouch UI for IOS devices, OR an
QT UI for Nokea and Intel's new project.
Just my two cents.
Regards,
Alex,
Alex Jurgensen,
VoiceOver Trainer,
ASquared21@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Visit us on the web at: www.vipbc.org
--
John J. Boyer; President, Chief Software Developer
Abilitiessoft, Inc.
http://www.abilitiessoft.com
Madison, Wisconsin USA
Developing software for people with disabilities
Alex Jurgensen,
VoiceOver Trainer,
ASquared21@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Visit us on the web at: www.vipbc.org <http://www.vipbc.org/>
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