Re: Swarm -> Windows-NT...

[glen e. p. ropella]

Vladimir Jojic writes:
 > Still you will need the gcc to compile the swarm app, and I am not sure,
 > that gcc will know how to link java libs, java gui translator lib and
 > swarm libs, all together. 

I'm pretty sure this won't be a problem.  I've already been
able to use gcc to call native C (compiled with gcc) from Java.
I just followed the very straightforward example in the java
tutorial.  I'm now working on doing the same with Objective C.

Now, going the other way (calling java from Objective C) could
provide some problems... But, I doubt they will be insurmountable
problems.  If anybody out there has done this or has any ideas about
doing this, please let me know.

 > But, than again that company could provide you with a stand alone
 > application (or an applet) that receives messages from swarm app (compiled
 > with the java gui translator lib) and displays the output (chances are that
 > this will be slow).
 > 
 > How will this work? Are they going to give you the source code?

Swarm (plus Java GUI) will just run as an application, i.e. it 
will be compiled and run locally.  We're going to write an analog
to libtclobjc that will provide the pointer maintenance and interface
between objective C and Java.  Now, I don't, however, think that we
will make this library separate from Swarm.  But, that's still up
in the air.  It would be a nice thing to have so that other ObjC/Java
users who may not be Swarm users could interface the two.  But, 
it would also mean maintaining it as a separate package, which we
may not have the manpower to do.

 > Don't get me wrong, I think that it is a good idea, to make Swarm portable
 > (and Java is the best way to do it at this moment, not to mention the
 > possibility of viewing the progress of simulation on the Web). But, I
 > don't see a way to do it, and preserve the performance you had with
 > tcl/tk/blt/X conglomerate. I am probably missing something, right? 

We may take a performance hit.  But, one of the points that 
de-emphasizes the perf. hit is that people with large and 
compute intensive simulations can run in batch mode and play
back any data they may need in whatever viewer they can.  That
doesn't eviscerate the perf. hit point because it means that 
Swarm wouldn't be ideal for high interactivity and high performance.

But, I think the gains we will make in the broadening of our 
user community to include the WinNT world *and* the Java
world outweighs the perf. hit.  And, hopefully, using Java
for our GUI will open up new possibilities for remote execution
and performance optimizations later on.

Any flaws in my reasoning?

glen

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