Re: No Java Version of Swarm is planned!

[Benedikt Stefansson]

Hi guys,

glen e. p. ropella wrote:

>  > If so, will it run on my PPC Mac or will
>  > have to make some changes?  Thanks, John
>
> The target is to provide a version of Swarm that does not require X.
> It will still require Objective C.  And I believe it will require GNU
> Objective C.  This means that it's unlikely that the version of Swarm
> that uses a Java GUI will run on the Macintosh operating system.  (If
> there's a version of GNU ObjC for Mac, let's hear about it.)  Of
> course, this doesn't mean you can't run it on your PPC machine.... as
> long as you use MkLinux (or some other PPC compatible unix) as your
> operating system.

As you may know Apple has a new OS coming out, code name Rhapsody. This is
a preemptive multitasking, advanced multithreading, symmetric
multiprocessing, and protected memory OS, compatible with UNIX (BSD 4.4)
that also runs MacOS programs in a "Blue Box" process (which is not an
emulator and thus does not impose a speed penalty).

The target release date is May, which seems to be realistic since a 2nd
Developers Release is coming out and the system is already very mature and
stable. This OS will run on all PCI Mac PPCs (see
http://www.macosrumors.com/rhapinfo.html for a more detailed list), and
because of it's roots in NeXT Rhapsody supports both Objective-C and GCC
out of the box, and offers  impressive development tools for ObjC. The
Java VM is also considered to be excellent.

>From the looks of it a port of Swarm to Rhapsody should be easy on the
basis of the work that has gone into the NT/JavaGUI project. Of course it
will take some time, and if the target audience is out there we may
perhaps entice Apple to support this effort as Intel has done with the NT
version. Who's willing to give Steve Jobs a call?

-Benedikt


-- ----------------
Benedikt Stefansson                 address@hidden
Department of Economics, UCLA       Fax. (310) 825-9528
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1477          Tel. (310) 825-1777



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