[MUD-Dev] java clients

[Jo Dillon]

On 31 Jul 2002 at 21:28, Daniel James wrote:

> We're using Java, but we're using Java 1.4 and running the client
> completely separately as a standalone application via Java
> Webstart.  This lets the user grant an application once-off
> permission for network and disk access. It also lets them add
> desktop icons etc, and manages the download of updates (not
> especially efficiently, but it does it). Oh, and you can
> cut-and-paste.
 
> Using Java this way gets you away from the jungle of browser JVMs
> (I wouldn't try to do a complex application in the browser, the
> variations alone will drive you nuts), but comes with penalties --
> notably the 9mb Java 1.4 download -- that would probably drive
> most folks into platform specificity or even other platforms like
> python/tcl.
 
> We're doing it because we're Java fans: we're betting that the
> platform independence and other aspects of the language (good
> support for code reuse, increasingly good libraries, broad
> programmer acceptance) will stand us in good stead, especially
> when we come to porting the game to other platforms, making new
> games, or open-sourcing our toolkit.
 
> Besides, I'd have to develop new motivational 'therapies' to get
> my engineers to write Window$ code. Alas, we will probably have to
> do a little of this -- even 1.4 has keyboard manager issues that
> may end up needing platform specific code. Break out the rrrum!

Another approach (for commercial types) might be to use the Qt
toolkit (http://www.trolltech.com) - a disclaimer; I worked for them
until about 3 months ago. It's a C++ cross-platform GUI toolkit
which includes basic TCP networking and thread support (so depending
on what you're doing no Windows-specific code need be involved); it
works on Windows, Unix and MacOS X; it draws all its own buttons,
listboxes and so forth rather than wrapping the native ones so you
don't get AWT-type issues of things working on one platform and not
another; it even has the necessary hooks for cross- platform OpenGL
in a window. It's also rather less than 9 megabytes in size.  Sorry
if this sounds like something from their advertising department -
but to me it would be the obvious choice if I wanted to write a
cross-platform client.

--

	Jo



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