JavaFX

[Jagged]

Looks like Java FX might finally arrive for iOS

Might this become an option for 1.4?

[jfrazierjr]

Looks like Java FX might finally arrive for iOS

Might this become an option for 1.4?

Please don't take this the wrong way, but either you did not read the entire article or did not understand it. Fundamentally, this will never happen(at least not by the core RPTools team) until Apple modifies it's policy for the ITunes store. Fundamentally, APPLE MUST ADD JAVA SUPPORT TO iOS, (either via embedded to the OS or via an app store download upon with java programs would then have as a separate dependency) before there would be any possibility of the RPTools officially supporting iOS devices. Since this is unlikely to happen in the near future(if ever), I will restate what's been stated a hundred times before, RPTools on iOS is probably never going to happen.

Now.. with that said, there might be some good news in there... namely that it makes it a bit easier to think about RPTools products on Android devices. Even still, it's fairly doubtful that this would happen in MapTool 1.4 in any event. A switch of GUI interface is a HUGE job and or focus is on other more important things for 1.4. Sure, there will be some incremental GUI changes in 1.4, but I am almost certain they will still be with the Swing GUI toolkit and that whatever comes after 1.4(be it 1.5, 2.0, or whatever) will be where we will JavaFX will replace Swing.

Craig did a rundown a few months ago somewhere and I will repeat as much as I can remember:

Desktop/LapTop:

• Windows (whatever Oracle will product Java versions for)
• Mac (whatever Oracle will product Java versions for)
• Linux (whatever Oracle will product Java versions for)

* Note that something is wrong with either the OpenJDK java(default of both Mac and Linux if I recall correctly) or how the MapTool code was built and thus the MT networking components won't work correctly... Azhrei has mentioned he will look into OpenJDK support RSN(real soon now) to try to get it working in 1.4

Non Desktop/LapTop:

• iOS: Never (never say never, but... as close to never as you can get based on what we know now... certainly not in the next few years even if Apple changes it policies(which is doubtful))
• Android tablets: theoretical possibility, doubtful for 1.4 though
• Windows RT: likely a ditto of iOS but replace Apple with Microsoft.. basically, MS did this moronic thing where they aped Apple and demands that you build windows RT apps in "THEIR" language.
• Windows Surface Pro(NOT WINDOWS SURFACE which is based on Windows RT!!!!!): This really belongs in the Desktop/LapTop category. The biggest issue here is the horribly small memory allotted. So.. theoretically, you could get MapTool working, but it would be like entering a one legged man in a cross country race with the top marathon runners in the world. The guy could finish the race, but he would never win and would take a hell of a long time to finish.

[Jagged]

Please don't take this the wrong way, but either you did not read the entire article or did not understand it. Fundamentally, this will never happen(at least not by the core RPTools team) until Apple modifies it's policy for the ITunes store.

I'm not offended, but the guy does speculate it might be possible to compile something that would meet the restrictions for iStore.

[jfrazierjr]

Please don't take this the wrong way, but either you did not read the entire article or did not understand it. Fundamentally, this will never happen(at least not by the core RPTools team) until Apple modifies it's policy for the ITunes store.

I'm not offended, but the guy does speculate it might be possible to compile something that would meet the restrictions for iStore.

Possible, yes.. likely no(for most developers I would guess)... for RPTools products, definitely not. In any event, even if someone external wanted to do something like that for MapTool, it would be at least after 1.4 before we would be using JavaFX exclusively, so anyone who wanted to do their own thing with the MapTool code to add in a java JVM and JavaFX would have to wait until we switched to JavaFX or redo a TON of work and if they are going to redo a ton of work, why not just do it in Apple's native language in the first place?

Fundamentally, what I would really like to see in the future(though I can't say if or even when) would be to have the network parts (ie, the bits that handle communication between machines) be abstracted away into passing a formatted structure(such as soap doc literal documents) as opposed to serialized java objects. This then let's the "client" translate the incoming data into an "object" that it can handle however it wants. In theory, one should be able to built a MapTool client in C#, Java, Perl, Ruby, etc. Then the client can implement whatever features it can and what the developers decide to bake into it. We are sort of part way there with the campaign object since it's XML based and is sent over as an XML structure(with it's sub objects such as tokens, etc), however.... the existing XML structure is highly java centric and I would prefer us to make this more generic. This still leaves other part of data transfer such as chat/macro data, etc which are purely java objects being sent across(at least to my understanding..)