[General] Is anyone working on Rhino+Batik Lively?

[Krzysztof Palacz]

Hi Peter,
	We were, and still are quite interested in a pure Java version of  
Lively.
Actually, I got a big chunk of LK to work under Rhino+Batik at some  
point and it even ran semi-decently on a fast machine. The major  
missing bits were support for XmlHttpRequest and font metrics. As a  
stopgap measure, I simply made up the font metrics, so text looked  
ridiculous, but it did show on the screen. As for XHR, we've been told  
that there is at least one implementation out in the wild that could  
be potentially integrated with the codebase.

I was planning to try to access font metrics from Javascript using  
Rhino's Java interface, but never got to do it, if you or anyone else  
were interested in taking a look, that would be awesome! :) And I'll  
be glad to pass on whatever little I know about the problems.
It all used to run from the main source tree (Lively.svg is the entry  
point). If it doesn't any more, it's probably a matter of few small  
fixes.

Of course, the Holy Grail of LK on Rhino+Batik would be to package it  
as a Java applet that could broaden the reach of LK to those condemned  
to IE.  However, although both myself and my employer are emotionally  
attached to the Java platform, the perception is that Java is not  
really a part of the so called Open Web. From the Open Web  
perspective, the Examotion plugin seems more palatable than Rhino 
+Batik, since it appears to be a workaround for missing native support  
for a standard graphics format, as opposed to an independent platform  
and execution engine (actually two, JVM and then Rhino on top of it,  
in addition to the browser's JS engine). It's probably also a smaller  
download... On the other hand, it'd be nice to have access to all the  
goodies that come with the Java platform....

As for VML, from what I've heard it was always noticeably slower than  
browser SVG implementations (not speed demons, either), and I don't  
think Microsoft cares about it much anymore, since they hope that  
everyone will use Silverlight instead (much like Adobe, who stopped  
bothering with their SVG plugin once they bought Macromedia and bet  
the house on Flash/Flex). Now, from what I understand, Silverlight  
supports (through XAML) a graphics model quite similar to SVG, and it  
can run some version of Javascript, and it runs on the Mac.
	
Lively/Silverlight, anyone :)?

	Krzysztof


On Jul 16, 2008, at 4:11 PM, Peter Fraser wrote:

> The backspace issue highlights the sheer heroism of those making  
> Lively
> run on browsers :-)
>
> As a matter of pragmatism   -is anyone working on the Rhino+ Batik
> implementation? I note rhino-compat.js in the source download.
>
> I'm negotiating a research project where it would be great to use LK,
> but I don't want to be researching heroic backspace workarounds on  
> windows.
>
> On the other hand, a JRE requirement  would be workable (especially
> given the demonstrable path towards "nothin-but-browser" ) .
>
> Perhaps I'm being naive about the difficulty of the Java approach, but
> it strikes me as being a great complement to pure browser Lively
> -having different deployment, hackability and performance tradeoffs.
> I'm not personally up for a complete Java LK implementation, but if
> there was half an implementation sitting somewhere, I'd be keen to  
> have
> a look.
>
> I would also be fascinated to hear any comments on the relative merits
> of the Java approach vs Examotion(etc)  -as an IE solution   (and come
> to that, on the viability of Lively on VML)
>
>
> pete F
>
>
> I really meant to do some more research before asking these questions,
> but well   -I get excited.
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