Javability (Java, Zaurus, Linux, Live)

26.11.04 09:41 OpenEmbedded (

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As OpenEmbedded server (and handhelds.org) is down since few days, I thought I will list here few intersting links, so if ever someone asks me about OE I can point him to this post.

OE Homepage

Presentations:
Introduction to the GPE Palmtop Environment and the OpenEmbedded build system (PDF) by Phil Blundel
Development tools for embedded Linux systems by Michael Opdenacker

Projects using OE:
OpenZaurus for all kind of Sharp PDA's
Familiar, mostly for IPaq
OpenSIMPAD for Siemens SIMpad
EliteDVB for Dreambox
Yopi
Meshcube
Openembedded distribution for Psion's Netbook and Series7 systems
NSLU2 Linux

Mailing lists:
OE mailing list
OpenZaurus maling list

Other
Open Embedded talk
small OE introduction

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23.11.04 09:26 Article: "A Survey of J2ME Today" and J2ME package listing (

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The article A Survey of J2ME Today gives a good introduction about current (Octoboer 2004) J2ME platform structure (CLDC, MIDP, extensions) and supported features (WMA, MMAP, WebServices, Location, SIP, RMI, JDBC...).

J2ME Package Listing shows J2ME package structure from JSR point of view.

posted by Jean-Marc Autexier | 0 comments | Permalink | Send to Friends | Google it!

09:20 Open Letter to Sun from Eric Raymond (

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Kevin Bedell give some citations of the Open Letter to Sun from Eric Raymond about Java and Bazar.

Here are the most important things on my point of view:

Eric: "The essence of the bazaar is not voting ... but the right to fork"
About open sourcing Solaris: "Mr. Schwartz's time would be better spent explaining why he thinks those reasons don't apply to Java"
BM is going to release a fully open-source JRE and class libraries within the next year

posted by Jean-Marc Autexier | 0 comments | Permalink | Send to Friends | Google it!

18.11.04 18:19 Acquire Images with TWAIN and SANE and other links (

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Too many interesting stuff, not enough time to play with all of them, so just few links:

java.net: Java Tech: Acquire Images with TWAIN and SANE, Part 1
A Collection of JVM Options
Project looking glass presentation
JDS & LG3D Unofficial Support Site Forum Index: contains some presentations, mini-docs (1, 2, 3), development docs (1, 2 )

I'm currently reading Hardcore Java, and so far (I'm on page 53), and I can recommend it to everyone. Especially for people like me who are not developing daily, it remembers me things I have forgotten over the years: abbreviated if, assertions, chaining constructors (see also here), final parameters, why use protected instead of private for helper methods, encapsulation tips, performance tips (mutable, immutable,), ...

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14.11.04 13:44 Bill day - J2ME development introduction (

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Pretty cool J2ME devleopment introduction by Bill Day. Covers J2ME, CLDC, MIDP 1.0 and 2.0. You can listen also to his talk.

Things I didn't know:

socket communication: Connector.open("socket://java.sun.com:port"), see also midp network. This would be cool also for J2SE.
CLDC 1.1 has floating point support
Location API in MIDP 2.0: I've read about this (phone with GPS build-in), but couldn't test it so far because I don't have such a device.

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13.11.04 17:48 Plustek OpticPro UT12 with Suse Linux 9.2 and kernel 2.6 (

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Since I upgraded my system from Suse 9.0 (kernel 2.4) to Suse 9.2 (kernel 2.6.8) my scanner didn't work anymore. Once again is was a pain to configure hardware under linux, but once again i learned a lot (no scanner module since 2.6.3, sane backends...).

I finally managed to get it work. If you have the same problem, read my summary.

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12.11.04 23:33 my domain runs on Solaris 8 (

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My domain (www.autexier.de, which is hosted by Strato runs on Solaris 8, with Apache 1.3.31, according to netcraft.

Good to see that Microsoft also believe in Unix/Linus strongness. I wonder how they installed Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Linux :-)

Read the story on linux today.

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20:31 Eclipse CDT (

)

Eclipse becoming more and more my universal development platform (Java editor, debugger, profiler, database modeling tool, database query, jasper report designer, XML editor, mobile J2ME application and many other plugins (see here and here), I thought it is time to check C/C++ support.

I've tested eclipse CDT 2.0.2 for Linux and Windows with Eclipse 3.0. The Linux installation and usage (read my summary) was pretty easy, Windows more difficult (cygwin, make required, tried to use MS compiler...). I will shortly write down my Windows experiences.

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4.11.04 18:47 InetAddressLocator test (

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In my spare time I've tested InetAddressLocator. My little application parse the web server access file of my site (www.autexier.de), extract InetAddress and retrieve the Locale using InetAddressLocator.

Log file:


dsl-084-057-008-173.arcor-ip.net - - [01/Oct/2004:00:42:01 +0200] "GET /jmau/linux/Blue...

66.151.189.9-rev.colospace.com - - [01/Oct/2004:00:42:15 +0200] "GET /jmau/blog/atom.xml HTTP/1...

209.237.227.242 - - [01/Oct/2004:01:00:05 +0200] "GET /jmau/blog/ HTTP/...

209.237.227.242 - - [01/Oct/2004:01:00:05 +0200] "GET /jmau/blog ...

The result is a sorted list of country/hits (this is October 2004):


Jugoslawien - 1

Bahrain - 2

Dänemark - 3

Trinidad und Tobago - 4

Kolumbien - 5

Singapur - 6

Ecuador - 7

Estland - 8

Slowakei - 9

Tschechische Republik - 10

Thailand - 11

Indien - 12

Iran - 14

Bangladesch - 16

Hongkong - 17

Türkei - 18

Philippinen - 19

Belgien - 23

Niederlande - 24

Finnland - 26

Brasilien - 29

Australien - 30

Schweden - 35

Kanada - 57

Spanien - 68

Österreich - 84

Japan - 95

China - 163

Italien - 184

Vereinigtes Königreich - 215

Frankreich - 404

Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika - 3374

Deutschland - 5490

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13:27 Why Linux is a Better Choice than Windows (

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As response to ongoing marketing activities from MS against Linux, Novell has created a new web site which 'clarifies' the situation of Linux in enterprise from Novell point of view.

As with the MS page, be very careful with information you find on those sites. It's very difficult to say which of this 'facts' are really true or 'made nice' by analysts.

Anyway, it's good to see that there is also more and more activities on marketing level for Linux Software.

My personal four steps of Software development:

Piece of Software: this are small applications or libraries which have been written very fast, are unmaintained, not stable ... You find many of those for Linux, especially on SourceForge (don't understand me wrong: I love SourceForge and this kind of software. This are often pioneers for new concepts and feasibility studies, things big companies often don't have time to do). You don't find much MS application in this category
Application: this means using qualitative Software development processes, having architectural concepts, API's, modularization, unit testing. Many Linux projects have this (Gnome, KDE, Apache, Linux, OpenOffice ...), and MS of course also.
Products: take an application and add more testing (QA), documentation, online help, ... Again I think that many Linux communities have reached this level.
Marketing: last but not least you need a good marketing to bring products to customers. OpenSource projects mainly only have a web site, a mailing list and IRC channel. This is where MS is very strong, but Novell activities above, the firefox newspaper campaign and more and more Linux articles in the press shows that time are changing.

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3.11.04 22:27 Bitkkeeper GUI tools (

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Small overview about bitkeeper graphical tools.
I use bitkeeper for OE and discover everyday new nice functionality.

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2.11.04 18:30 Firefox kommt (

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Following the example of the successfull collection for advertising of firefox 1.0 in The New York Times, the Mozilla Europe foundation tries to do the same in German newspaper. I just gave some money to www.firefox-kommt.de and hope my name will appear in FAZ (I was under the first 11% required for the add :-).

Update: official buttons and banners of the german "firefox in the newspaper" action.