Re: Is there an actual EXIT or QUIT command in java?
Andrew Thompson wrote:
On Feb 2, 9:14 pm, Nigel Wade <n...@ion.le.ac.uk> wrote:
..
...There are/were
platforms for which there is a JVM and applet plugin, but noWebStart. That
was
my point. By promotingWebStartover applets you are unnecessarily restricting
the usability of the final product.
Is JWS Open Source?
I doubt it, but I do not know (& do not especially
care - I don't need the source for my purposes).
...Can it be ported to other platforms, or is it only available
on those platforms for which Sun have decided to create a version?
I am not sure if it is 'licensable' for other OS
manufacturers (I expect it is, just like the JVM)
or JRE(/deployment technology) makers.
I suspect it is. Whether they take up that
opportunity, is obviously up to them.
...I don't
know, I don't use it because until recently our main platform was sgi IRIX.
There was no JWS for IRIX,
OK - noted that is one situation where Java applets
will run, but not web-start, I will add that to the other
one I know of - IE running the MSVM.
Given it is the first time I have heard IRIX mentioned
around these parts, I expect it is not a big player in
the global scheme of things. (Please correct me if
I am wrong - is it big in the server area, running Java?)
Ah, what a sheltered life is lead by the Windows fraternity...
IRIX/sgi is not a big player in the Java field, but they are there non-the-less.
But the main fact was that our platform was IRIX and there was no WebStart for
it, so WebStart didn't get considered. Others researchers in our field who
might want to use our web based real-time data visualisation used IRIX, HP-UX,
AIX, Digial UNIX (Alpha) and various other platforms. My understanding at the
time the project started was that there was much more support for applets
across those platforms than there was for WebStart, which was (and pretty much
still is) only available for Solaris, Windows and Linux. The only one of those
3 OSs which we used at the time was Solaris.
...so for Web based visualization applets were our only
option.
Application with main in manifest, no good for you?
That would mean downloading and installing the application on every single
machine from which user might want to access the data (and keep them up to
date). Not really an option for users at other sites who would want to view our
real-time data, and a PITA for me to administer at our site.
Surely the original purpose of applets was to avoid this scenario.
(I have had some success launching simple
apps. directly from a link on the internet, but
never took it very far.) Does IRIX support
launching 'applications with manifest' by
double clicking it, or from 'shortcuts'?
Absolutely not. It's not a cheap desktop OS where the "user experience" is more
important than security. It's a real OS which doesn't allow you to install
viruses by clicking on website links.
Applets provided (and still provide) the functionality I require. To my view
WebStart is proprietary, and is a more restrictive option than applets.
--
Nigel Wade, System Administrator, Space Plasma Physics Group,
University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK
E-mail : nmw@ion.le.ac.uk
Phone : +44 (0)116 2523548, Fax : +44 (0)116 2523555