Re: 4GL legacy -> GUI C++ or Java ?

>On Fri 4 Dec 1998, Candy McCall <candym@olcinc.com> wrote: >>I'm aware of the Java client in an upcoming release. >>Will it enable you to integrate your own java code or >>is it just a "java client" that interprets the TCL/TK >>commands? > >The basic answer is "It is just a Java Client that interprets the Tcl/Tk >commands". This is certainly all that is planned for the initial release, >due in the first half on 1999. > >It would be interesting to consider what might be involved in allowing you >to add to that interpreter for a later release. It seems to me that Java >provides a number of facilities, most notably interfaces which a class can >implement, that should make it relatively easy to embed extra code into the >basic Java display server. I think the biggest issue is how to notify the >Java display server that it needs to make the calls to the extra code; that >is, how to register the callbacks. The actual classes that are called would >implement a pre-determined interface, of course. There'd also need to be a >clear explanation of when the callbacks are made and the facilities that are >available to the called functions, but that's "just" documentation. No, >this is not a definitive proposal -- it is a suggestion with no commitment >from anybody at Informix or 4J's for it ever being implemented in any form. >I'm not a Java expert, either, so I could be completely off the wall here. >Your thoughts? > >Yours, >Jonathan Leffler (jleffler@informix.com) #include <witticism.h> >Guardian of DBD::Informix v0.60 -- http://www.perl.com/CPAN >Informix IDN for D4GL & Linux -- http://www.informix.com/idn > > Do you know if the new Java client will be painting visual components of the java language or doing as it does now? It would be interesting if it could use the classes of the java Swing components, now part of the lastest JDK, Java 2. That would greatly enhance the visual part of D4GL. If it does use the java components, then it would be nifty if one could take advantage of the different layout managers, possibly being able to define the layout manager in the ".per" source file. The order of the fields in the form would of course define the tab order, but then the layout manager could place the fields in the proper layout. Just a thought. Also, if it did use java classes for the visual classes, it would nice to have the capability of extending those classes or even using classes of your own. D4GL is pretty strong as far as manipulating data, etc. One thing that would be nice is to have vectors, or arrays whose size can increase. I'd like to have the capability of defining a program array that is an array of these vectors. Then, one could define a database grid whose length and width are not know until run-time. I look forward to the new java client! Candy -- Candy McCall ONLINE Computing, Inc. (candym@olcinc.com)