Java in Notes on the Mac... at last! 10 Sep, 2007
I just caught sight of Ed’s comment in his thread about the Collaboration University keynotes taking place in Kansas City. Short story: Java agents on the Mac will soon be a reality. At long last, the Mac Notes client really starts to get parity with its Windows counterpart. Thank you IBM.
In other Mac / Notes news, whilst we already knew that the first Notes 8 release for the Mac wouldn’t come until 8.01, apparently this is due to the fact that Notes 8 on the Mac requires Eclipse 3.4. I must go read up on the roadmap, find out what it is that’s causing the problem.
Update: well, I read the plan for 3.4 but I’m none the wiser: just some OS X-specific stuff around SWT accessibility and internationalisation.
It's like a biblical family tree. Notes 8 was begat by Expeditor was begat by Eclipse was begat by JFace was begat by SWT was begat by the JNI interface to the native OS calls.
On OS X, that JNI interface to the native OS currently doesn't support DBCS (double-byte character sets -- needed for several eastern languages) and BIDI (bi-directional character sets -- needed for Arabic and Hebrew languages.) When was the last time you knew IBM to issue a release that excluded 1/3 of the population of the earth?
It also doesn't yet support character readers for the blind (incidentally one of the key contributions that IBM is making back to the OpenOffice.org team http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20070910080731573 )
It doesn't matter whether OS X itself has great support for these features. SWT is basically an API translation layer where OS display calls are mapped 1:1 to a JNI library, and then translated to the widget toolkit library. Until that's complete, middle eastern and eastern language support, along with support for the blind, simply aren't available to the Eclipse workbench.Nathan T. Freeman#
But as I recall, the JVM was always the main reason cited for delays on the Mac (and I don't mean with regards Java agents, I mean running Notes 8 Standard full-stop).
All this is somewhat moot in one respect though: I don't understand how delays to SWT and Eclipse have any impact on Notes 8 basic.Ben Poole#
Cheers,
- MikeMike Brown#
But I am not privy to IBM's plans on this, so I cannot speak authoritatively.Nathan T. Freeman#
My take on it is that Notes 8 basic essentially builds upon Notes 7. And Notes 7 does exist for the Mac, i.e. the core C/C++ code has been ported, as has the GUI code. So whilst I see no reason why there wouldn't be a basic client for OS X (especially given the Eclipse-related delays discussed already), at the same time I wouldn't be surprised if IBM decided to keep its Mac resources focussed on the main event, i.e. standard.Ben Poole#
One of the other pre-reqs Ed mentioned for Notes 8 on the Mac was Leopard. Not sure why, though.
But I did also see some other cooool stuff too :)
Warren Warren Elsmore#
Have you seen how many people think they can do this on Windows?Nathan T. Freeman#