Re: Java

[Stan Shebs <shebs@cygnus.com>]

   From: arick@pobox.com (A. Rick Anderson)
   Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 04:31:40 GMT

   Since you are wrapping up the tcl version, when will we see a Java
   version :-)

:-) I must confess, I've been studying Java.  It's hard to tell if
it's in a suitable state though.  tcl/tk actually has two separate
advantages: 1) high-level GUI-building, and 2) a platform-independent
low-level graphics.

The second is somewhat important, because Xconq's graphics is very
data-intense; while a game like Doom or Quake only renders a couple
dozen polygons or bitmaps at any one time, Xconq is typically plotting
hundreds or even thousands in the maps.  Java's high-level graphics is
almost certainly unequal to the task, and there is no common
lower-level graphics layer, which means separate implementations for
each platform, bleah.

So Java is worth monitoring, but probably too risky as a new interface
language.  I'd like to see someone else make it a basis for a usable
intensive graphics application first, and get the sources to see how
they did it...

								Stan