[oXygen-user] What does Apple's deprecation of Java mean for oXygen?

[Adrian Buza]

Hello,

Apple has marked as deprecated their Java Virtual Machine (JVM) 
implementation. This means that starting with the next version of Mac OS 
X 10.7, this JVM may be removed [on Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6 Java will 
remain built-in]. Starting with Mac OS X 10.7 all Java applications will 
most likely have to use another third party JVM.

Unfortunately, at this time, no other JVM has a user interface 
integration in the operating system anywhere as good as the one 
currently offered by Apple.


Current situation:

oXygen has two distributions:
- the standalone AWT/Swing application
- the SWT plugin for Eclipse.

AWT/Swing based applications like Netbeans, JDeveloper and the 
standalone version of oXygen, will all be affected. The result will be a 
user interface that is not smoothly integrated in the Mac look and feel, 
and possibly the entire application being displayed using the X Window 
System.

Eclipse has the nice feature of using native user interface controls on 
each platform, directly, without the need of AWT. So, an application 
using SWT will look and perform exactly the same, no matter the JVM it 
uses.


What we can do:

1. If no JVM rises to the challenge of implementing AWT/Swing support 
with the appropriate Mac look and feel, we'll pack a stripped down 
version of Eclipse (called a Rich Client Platform) with the oXygen XML 
Editor plugin and the OpenJDK JVM. This has already been tested and 
works on the current Mac OS X operating systems independent from the 
Apple JVM. This may very well be the new oXygen distribution for Mac OS 
X 10.7.

2. If things go as they should, Oracle will pick up where Apple left off 
and will provide a JVM for the Mac, with full AWT/Swing integration. In 
this case, the standalone oXygen distribution will continue its 
existence on the Mac OS X platform in its current form, possibly with 
the JVM built-in to make it work out-of-the-box.


So, unless Apple completely closes Mac OS X to Java applications, which 
is very unlikely, Oxygen will continue to have a Mac OS X distribution 
that integrates as well as possible with the operating system and its 
graphical interface.

Regards,
Adrian

Adrian Buza
oXygen XML Editor and Author support

http://www.oxygenxml.com

Roger wrote:
> Dear oXygen Users,
>
> Apple recently announced that future versions of Mac OS X may no longer
> include a Java runtime:
>
> <http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#releasenotes/Java/JavaSnowLeopardUpdate3LeopardUpdate8RN/NewandNoteworthy/NewandNoteworthy.html%23//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40010380-CH4-SW1>
>
> Any idea what that will mean for the future of Java-based apps like oXygen?
>
> Will a Mac version of oXygen bring its own JRE, or will we need to download
> one from somewhere else to run oXygen?
>
> I know it's a long way off, but just curious what this announcement will mean...
>
> Roger
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