Re: [eclipse-incubator-e4-dev] SWT port to Flex

[Steve Northover <Steve_Northover@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Sorry Pat, I didn't intend the URL slap.

What problem would providing the spirit
of SWT on top of Flex and Dojo solve?  What language would you program
in?  _javascript_ or ActionScript?  Not useful I think.  If
you are using "native" technologies and don't intend portability,
then just use them.

SWT for Dojo for Rhino:  This would
be programming SWT in _javascript_, right?  I'm not sure what this would
solve either.

Patrick Mueller <pmuellr@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: eclipse-incubator-e4-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx

09/18/2008 05:58 PM

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Subject	Re: [eclipse-incubator-e4-dev] SWT port to Flex

Trying to wrap my head around what this even means.  Is
there a write-up somewhere?  You can't use a Java JCL directly with
Flex, so I assume you want to start with GWT or Harmony and transmute the
required classes to ActionScript.

My first take would have been to try to provide the spirit
of SWT on top of existing Flex (and for Dojo, dojo) infrastructure, as
much as you can.  But that's a different styled kind of result, and
it's not clear that it would be all that useful anyway.  

Here's an interesting thought: SWT for Dojo for Rhino.
 Which would of course use the "real" SWT in the end.  Giving
you some kind of "portability" story for JS across SWT/Java and
SWT/Dojo/browser.  Unless that's what SWT for Dojo already is ...

On Sep 18, 2008, at 1:45 PM, Steve Northover wrote:

One of the big issues when porting SWT
to a platform where Java isn't running is that Java isn't running.  For
the Flex port, a cross-compiler was written that converts Java to ActionScript,
but there's more than just syntax translation involved when running Java
without a JVM.  Java programs need a Java Class Library (JCL) to code
against.  For the Flex prototype, a small CLDC-like"Java Class
Library was written.  This was done to get off the ground but in the
long run, maintaining this JCL is not attractive. 

For the SWT Dojo port, GWT was used for both the cross-compiler and JCL.
 Moving forward, I can see two obvious candidates for a JCL for Flex:
GWT or Harmony.  I believe that the obvious approach (ie. use Sun's)
isn't on the table for licensing reasons. 

I'm proposing that we (e4) investigate GWT and Harmony.  Does anyone
else have any other ideas? 

Patrick Mueller
http://muellerware.org/


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