IFCX.org - Main

Bottom of the Ninth, or, Just how "Open" is Java anyways?

Jim White — 2008-12-22T12:37:02Z

Bottom of the Ninth, or, Just how "Open" is Java anyways? A recent post on the OCJUG list asked to what degree is Java "open" and when will everyone agree that it is "open" to their satisfaction. The fact that "Java" is a trademark (the significance of which was made obvious when Sun changed their stock symbol from SUNW to JAVA) means that what most folks think Java is will never be as open or free as some folks want. Furthermore, Sun has a dual license for their Java distribution which includes OpenJDK. So if you want to contribute to the most popular JDK distribution, you have to agree that Sun can also use your efforts under terms that are not necessarily free or open (although they do promise to always make your contribution available under a FSF and/or OSI approved license). http://openjdk.java.net/contribute/ So OpenJDK has two strikes against it. Here comes the next pitch, aaannd OpenJDK is GPL licensed, a home run! I was amazed and pleased that Sun went all the way and used GPL for Java. After all, I'd been saying that Java would eventually be OSS, even after the ISO talk was replaced by the JCP. That means this pillar of the Great Java Renaissance of 2006 is strong as it possibly can be. One of those strengths is that anyone who isn't satisfied with the degree of openness can simply fork with total abandon and with the best license for software freedom. That is a reality and one of the first projects spawned by OpenJDK is IcedTea, which is a free and open implementation of Java. As for folks saying Java being OSS doesn't matter. They are quite mistaken. Already we've seen significant developments such as SoyLatte which counters Apple's weak support of Java, and research work on Java being truly free and open in the Da Vinci Machine Project. This change in research work is important because in the past such work, if done with Sun's JDK, used a license that meant the resulting code rarely ever left the university. That the OpenJDK is an effective OSS project is clear because all of these efforts are now part of the OpenJDK project itself, rather than forking or otherwise choosing to stand alone or with another group. That is only the beginning and, by being real Open Source Software, we can rest assured that Java will grow in strength over the next decade just as it did the first. Of course we can also be assured that there are plenty of folks that will disagree with just about every aspect of all this jazz.

Grid computing with Groovy

Jim White — 2008-12-12T23:53:26Z

Grid computing with Groovy Alex Tkachman posted a question about Groovy style for checkpointed calculations. Here's my first try: // Proof of concept for Groovy checkpointed calculation with closures. // @author Jim White // http://www.ifcx.org/ Session session = new Session() // def initState = new Expando(data:'datalocation') def initState = [data:'datalocation'] def endState = eachWithCheckpoints(session, 'state1', initState, [ { stepCount = longInitialConditionsCalculation(data) } , { accumulator = 0 iterateWithCheckpoints(session, 'state2', it.state , 0..stepCount , { accumulator += 2 * it.step }) } , { result = "We did $stepCount iterations and the answer is $accumulator!" } ]) def longInitialConditionsCalculation(d) { 10 } println endState.result class Session { Object loadCheckpoint(String k) { null } void saveCheckpoint(String k, Serializable s) { } } def eachWithCheckpoints(Session session, String key, def initialState, List closures) { def control = session.loadCheckpoint(key) if (control.is(null)) { control = [step:0, state:initialState] } while (control.step < closures.size()) { Closure clos = closures[control.step] clos.delegate = control.state clos.resolveStrategy = Closure.DELEGATE_FIRST clos.call(control) control.step += 1 session.saveCheckpoint(key, control) } control.state } def iterateWithCheckpoints(Session session, String key, def initialState, Range range, Closure clos) { def control = session.loadCheckpoint(key) if (control.is(null)) { // Leave reversed range case as an exercise for the reader... assert !range.isReverse() control = [step:range.from, state:initialState] } clos.delegate = control.state clos.resolveStrategy = Closure.DELEGATE_FIRST while (control.step <= range.to) { clos.call(control) control.step += 1 session.saveCheckpoint(key, control) } control.state } ==> We did 10 iterations and the answer is 110! The idea is either you're doing a sequence of different steps or iterating the same step some number of times. Notice that the state can be any serializable thing. Map or Expando is handy, but some bean or other class would be fine. Obviously there are further refinements possible such as reversed and stepped ranges, and also a more functional style is possible. Either a builder or controller class would streamline things a bit by hiding some of the details of the eachWithCheckpoints/iterateWithCheckpoints calls. If Groovy had serializable iterators for the control step, that would make iterateWithCheckpoints nicer and let it change from taking just a simple integer range to a list. Naturally where there this is headed is cloud-powered click-and-it-goes Wings via your web browser using OOHTML.

TREE-META

Jim White — 2008-12-10T07:30:41Z

TREE-META I've been interested in TREE-META since I discovered it while at UC Irvine. We used a version for the UCSD p-System on the Teraks (desktop LSI-11/23). It had a pleasant and compact syntax that was more convenient than the LISP that took it's place for me. For several years I've been on the lookout for information on TREE-META but haven't been able to find out a great deal. After about the third time listening to The Mother of All Demos I heard them mention that TREE-META was the language used to implement the "special purpose languages", which we call "domain-specific" today. I've been unable to locate a copy of any version the program or the tech report describing the language, although I've seen hints than some folks have used it fairly recently. In commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the MoAD (also at Wired), I've created a Wikipedia stub about TREE-META as well as one here for non-WP suitable material. The WP article is very rough, but I'm hoping that others with information will bring it forward and collect it there.

OCaml, Scheme, and Adenine support for IFCX Wings, an in-progress console, and OOo My!

Jim White — 2008-11-22T18:25:24Z

OCaml, Scheme, and Adenine support for IFCX Wings, an in-progress console, and OOo My! IFCX Wings v0.7 is now available from the usual place (wow, spiffy new site design for SF.net!). It features an in-progress (during script execution) console that pops up during long running scripts. Very handy to see that something is happening while Ivy downloads your JAR dependencies. Default support for OCaml, Scheme, and Adenine has also been added. I've tested the Wings.odt with OOo 3.0beta2 on Windows XP and Mac OS X Leopard and it seems to work fine except that on Mac there is no support for AWT (and consequently no Swing). It also works with OOo 2.4 on Windows and NeoOffice 2.2 on Mac. Earlier versions are mostly OK too, but don't go toooo far (like 2.0) or GroovyForOpenOffice won't work (and you need it for Wings). Note that you must install Groovy For OpenOffice for the WingsEval macro to work. Otherwise you can just open the Wings document and read it, but the code won't be executable. The keyboard shortcut for the Wings macro seems to work with all those versions and platforms too. The Wings.odt file is signed so that you can have some reasonable expectation that we're using the same bits. Of course if yours is not signed by my CA Cert showing JAMES PAUL WHITE and my email address then there may be a problem. OCaml (Objective Caml) is a popular version of ML sporting OO features. OCaml-Java is the spiffy implementation for the JVM by Xavier Clerc used in Wings. Adenine is the language of the MIT Haystack Semantic Desktop and is essentially a LISP for graphs. It features a RDF data model, Pythonic syntax, and is implemented for the JVM. I have extricated it's implementation from Eclipse and packaged it with a JSR-223 engine adapter so that Wings can support it by default. The Adenine Tutorial converted to IFCX Wings is available from SVN. The Scheme support is using the SISC implementation (even though I'm long time Kawahead) because it has a JSR-223 engine already and it is also better for pedagogic purposes since it has full continuations. There is also exciting news regarding IFCX.org and the OpenOffice.org Community Innovation Program, but I'll hold off on the details of that until November.

The IFCX : Internet Foundation Classes eXtreme! web site is alive!

Jim White — 2008-06-10T12:27:35Z

The IFCX : Internet Foundation Classes eXtreme! web site is alive! I've been working on implementing Wiki Publishing for this web site (based on JSPWiki), and so haven't put any content here yet. Over the next several weeks I'll be filling in some details as I prepare for my Presentation Introducing IFCX at the July LAJUG . If you're the sort who just can't wait to find out what this all about, you can check out my little talk at the end of last week's OCJUG meeting on Google Video. My intention was to give a little 10 to 15 minute sneak peek on GWT and the start of an IFCX Builder for it. That's basically what I did, but it ran rather long... Check out the next entry for the announcement with the details.

Hello World!

Jim White — 2008-06-10T12:26:40Z

Hello World! The IFCX : Internet Foundation Classes eXtreme! web site is alive! I've been working on implementing Wiki Publishing for this web site (based on JSPWiki), and so haven't put any content here yet. Over the next several weeks I'll be filling in some details as I prepare for my Presentation Introducing IFCX at the July LAJUG . If you're the sort who just can't wait to find out what this all about, you can check out my little talk at the end of last week's OCJUG meeting on Google Video. My intention was to give a little 10 to 15 minute sneak peek on GWT and the start of an IFCX Builder for it. That's basically what I did, but it ran rather long... Check out the next entry for the announcement with the details.

DemoOOHTML & AntAnywhere updates

Jim White — 2008-06-10T03:39:26Z

DemoOOHTML & AntAnywhere updates The DemoOOHTML and AntAnywhere code was updated earlier this month. I'll be presenting on OOHTML and AntAnywhere at Code Camp next month.

IFCX on the Road!

Jim White — 2008-06-10T03:39:13Z

IFCX on the Road! IFCX is on the road to Bruce Eckel's Web Frameworks Jam in Crested Butte, CO. http://mindview.net/Conferences/ThinkingInJava I'm posting this update from Bryce Canyon, UT. The ProjectSummary is where I'll be putting links to site starting points. The first few stubby pages are Brief GUI History, Object-Oriented HTML, and eRDF Demo.

IFCX presentation at July LAJUG & OCJUG

Jim White — 2008-06-10T03:39:01Z

IFCX presentation at July LAJUG & OCJUG I will be making my debut (meaning there are more ideas than code, but then that's always the case with me) presentation introducing IFCX at the July LA Java User's Group on Tuesday July 11th. There will be an encore performance at the July Orange County Java User's Group on Thursday July 13th. TITLE: Jim White Shows Off His New Thing (aka Introducing IFCX : Internet Foundation Classes eXtreme!) ABSTRACT: Topics currently planned include: A Brief History of GUI Technological Innovation Introducing IFCX : The Web is The Computer! GWT : AJAX with Google Web Toolkit IFCX : AppletServer ("Any Toolkit, Any Deployment") IFCX : Ant Anywhere IFCX : Web Site Publishing with JSPWiki IFCX : Semantic Web Wikification System And a Special Surprise (or two)! There is also bound to be ranting about the Java GUI Trail of Tears, Open Source and Java, Java Renaissance, the Evil of Software Patents, and who knows what else. So don't miss it! Although if you do, you will have a second chance as the presentation will be videotaped. ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Jim White (http://www.pagesmiths.com) is a software developer and consultant with decades of experience focused on GUI libraries & tools, build & deployment automation, networking, and embedded & portable devices. A long time LISP (formerly FORTH) hacker and Smalltalk admirer, he's been a Java fanatic since the JDK 1.0 beta release in 1995. More recently he's become an Open Source Software Business Evangelist, and is founder of the award-winning Darwine Project (http://darwine.sf.net). His pet project is PUP (the Program Understanding Program) and is realizing that vision through Semantic Web development in Internet Foundation Classes eXtreme! (http://www.ifcx.org).

June OCJUG AJAX presentations on Google Video

Jim White — 2008-06-10T03:38:41Z

June OCJUG AJAX presentations on Google Video The June 2006 OCJUG was recorded and posted to Google Video by Josh Rehman: http://javajosh.blogspot.com/2006/06/ocjug-videos-from-june-2006.html The main presentation was "Java Web development using Spring and DWR (AJAX library)" by Giuseppe Persiani, and I (Jim White) gave a minitalk (which turned rather longer than intended) introducing IFCX/GWT. An archive of Giuseppe's presentation (PPT & source) as given at the SoCalCodeCamp in January is here: http://www.myjavaserver.com/~peppix/ajaxdwr.zip Speaking of great video rants about (G)UI, I tripped over this link in the Scoble Exit Interview (which Scoble cites as his favorite): Bill Hill - Windows is not the most important OS And don't miss Bill's post in the discussion: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=927#927

IFCX Wings & G4OO updated, plus we've got Scala!

Jim White — 2008-05-12T19:46:37Z

IFCX Wings & G4OO updated, plus we've got Scala! The v0.6 release of IFCX Groovy For OpenOffice and Wings (version numbers bumped to align for the moment), demonstrated at CommunityOne and JavaOne last week, are available for download in the usual place. A big THANK YOU to Brendan Humphreys and Peter Moore of Atlassian for the invitation and support to present Wings in a lightning talk at CommunityOne. I did have a nasty demo devil bite that prevented a live demonstration, so next time I'll have a Time Machine backup with me... This release of Wings should be useful on at least an experimental level for the adventurous. The examples include plenty of Groovy of course, but also Ruby/JRuby, Python/Jython, and Haskell/Jaskell. Apache Ivy integration enables JAR dependencies to be loaded dynamically and languages are pluggable via the JSR 223: Scripting for the Java Platform. JDK 1.5 is all that is required, although JDK 1.6 or 1.7 are fine of course. G4OO v0.6 features Groovy 1.5.6 and Apache Ivy 2.0-SNAPSHOT bundled with the Ivy RoundUp Builder Resolver. Using that pluggable language scheme, and thanks to a sprint at the Scala lift off last Saturday with the invaluable assistance of Lex Spoon and Toomas Romer, WE HAVE SCALA! You can download it from the usual place.

OLPC XO Laptop : Give One Get One Now!

Jim White — 2007-12-21T22:57:32Z

OLPC XO Laptop : Give One Get One Now! Got my G1G1 XO Laptop yesterday evening and have been fiddling with it for it hours. I'm very pleased and impressed with the design and believe that the XO will deliver on OLPC's vision of bringing computer literacy to, and unleashing creativity in, the children of the developing world. Actually I'm convinced it will do that for more folks than just them! I did take some pictures of course, but I'll point you to some videos that do a better job of introducing the XO: Nice review by David Pogue Sound bites from OLPC team Brief tour of Sugar Sugar is the XO's desktop GUI. It is very good and has some excellent innovations. Three of the elements that stand out are visual map of the mesh network neighborhood, visual map of running applications (the "activities" in the circle are running, as opposed to the menu bar on the bottom which are those that can be launched), and, most importantly IMO, the activity-centric Journal (rather than the expired files-and-folders desktop metaphor). Having a task-oriented organization scheme is something I've been wanting/expecting in Mac OS for twenty years, perhaps now it'll happen when the Apple folks see they've been scooped in UI design by a Linux machine with 128MB of RAM (it's 1984 all over again!). Of course Genius Folders will be a dandy enhancement to the Journal's tagging scheme. For young children the XO is probably darn near perfect. The built-in tools (writing, music, chat, web browser, video, graphics, data recorder, and calculator) and games are the obvious starting point. For real computer powered creativity it has an impressive set of easy-to-use programming tools. Python is the XO's primary scripting language and the Pippy and Develop (Activity-building Activity) IDEs are a natural progression from EToys (a LOGO-like environment in Squeak/Smalltalk) and Turtle Art visual programming activities. Some obvious low-hanging fruit for making the XO a vehicle for teaching older children and young adults is packaging eBooks and on-line course material from sources like Project Guttenberg, MIT OpenCourseWare, and Stanford on iTunes U. I see a flourishing library system of SD cards and USB memories. Naturally the same materials would work dandy on the Sony and Amazon eBook readers. Somewhat more challenging (but of personal interest to me) is a web newsfeed system to replace my newspaper subscription. Java-oriented folks will of course be disappointed that XO doesn't normally support Java, but being a resource-constrained platform that is pretty much unavoidable (Microsoft has been making the same whine wrt Windows on XO). While there has been some work done to make Java available on XO including a JNLP handler, I think a more useful approach would be Google Android for XO. And I'm sure Gosling would agree since it is his opinion that the PC for the developing world is the cell phone and that the OLPC Project is bad idea. Another idea for developers I have is porting Sugar to the Nokia N800/N810 which have specifications that are similar to the XO (actually they're a bit slower and ARM-powered but the memory and display sizes are quite close). There is some discussion about Sugar and Nokia's Maemo but there doesn't seem to be any indication of a port in progress. There is still time to participate in Give One Get One as the deadline was extended to December 31st, so if you haven't ordered yours yet please do it now! Not only do you get a tax deduction for the donated XO, you also get a year of T-Mobile WiFi which covers a lot of places including a zillion Starbucks. When you do get your XO Laptop, please let me know as I'm interested in meeting up with other OLPC-minded folks.

Solar Unicat

Jim White — 2007-12-21T22:26:34Z

Solar Unicat A self-contained hydrogen fuel system in a Unicat would be ultracool. The biggest, baddest Green Thing on six wheels! Off-the-shelf components are available to do it with moderate cost: The Feds are on the hydrogen bandwagon: http://hydrogen.energy.gov/ Honda is moving the FCX to production: http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/10/hondas_more_pow.html Some high school students in Arizona made a solar hydrogen truck for $10K: http://www.fuelcellsworks.com/Supppage1259.html Another news page: http://freeenergynews.com/Directory/Hydrogen/index.html Green RV I need to set up a pahe & category for Green RV technology. But in the meantime I'll comment on the Solar Unicat post. This AutoBlogGreen item illustrates movement in the right direction: Ford Airstream concept: a shiny, hydrogen-powered PHEV funmobile. Not nearly as exciting as the Solar Unicat extreme Green RV concept, but a clear indication we're getting there. --Jim White, 26-Jan-2007

Groovy For OpenOffice v0.3 Released!

Jim White — 2007-11-02T02:02:26Z

Groovy For OpenOffice v0.3 Released! This release of GroovyForOpenOffice is faster and compatible with OpenOffice 2.3. It also includes the full collection of Groovy 1.0 library JARs. Get it from the IFCX SF.net files area. Also this release is the first to be available through the OOo Extension On-Line Update feature, which means if you've previously installed this extension you can get this version by clicking "Update" in the "Tools:Extensions..." dialog. I've also created an Installation document to help folks get started. The Groovy_Samples.odt has some install help but the notes on how to write nice(r) Groovy macros is not yet done. For a spiffy example of what can be done with G4OO, a verrry early POC of IFCX Wings is also included. It too is a little short on explanations but watch the http://www.ifcx.org/wiki/Wings.html for further development news. Please direct questions to the IFCX SF.net GroovyForOpenOffice forum.

Free Music

Jim White — 2007-11-01T21:07:03Z

Free Music I've finally written up my wish for the glorious mash-up of Google Audio and Music To Go that will bring Free Music for everybody!

Groovy For OpenOffice v0.2 Released!

Jim White — 2007-07-04T23:29:53Z

Groovy For OpenOffice v0.2 Released! Groovy For OpenOffice is an OpenOffice Extension that adds support for scripting OpenOffice Macros in Groovy. This release fixes a bug that kept the extension from working on Windows. Please report bugs (and success is welcome too!) to the GroovyForOpenOffice forum. See the Groovy For OpenOffice page for download information. Happy hacking!

Groovy For OpenOffice v0.1 Released!

Jim White — 2007-06-09T21:56:56Z

Groovy For OpenOffice v0.1 Released! Groovy For OpenOffice is an OpenOffice Extension that adds support for scripting OpenOffice Macros in Groovy. I've just released an initial version for those who love bleeding on the edge. I'm not able to provide much in the way of support for using this extension at the moment, so the OpenOffice community (which is large and strong) is the place to look for more information. Of course I will be reviewing this code in detail at my OCJUG presentation next week. See the Groovy For OpenOffice page for download information. Happy hacking!

Winging it at the OCJUG (again)

Jim White — 2007-06-08T21:30:14Z

Winging it at the OCJUG (again) I'll be talking about IFCX Wings (The Literate Scripting Toolkit) at the OCJUG next week (Thursday, June 14th). And since the Wings prototype is going to be a bit undercooked, I'll also be showing illiterate scripting tools that are ready-to-use. In addition to Groovy For Open Office in depth, we'll also look at some other Groovy Tools. The meeting location this month is at the Google Irvine office. Google Hosted - OC JUG Meeting: Date: Thursday, June 14th 2007 Location: Google Irvine 19540 Jamboree Rd. Suite 200 Irvine, CA 92612 Agenda: 6:30pm-7:00pm (Networking, food, drinks) 7:00pm-7:15pm (OC JUG announcements) 7:15pm-9:00pm (Presentation) If you're planning to attend, please RSVP to OCJUG Vice-Chair Ray Tayek (mailto:rtayek at ca.rr.com) so they can prepare name badges in advance.