application/x-java-applet;jpi-version=1.6.0_06

[Jack Bates]

On 10/01/14 08:57 AM, Deepak Bhole wrote:
> * Jiri Vanek <jvanek at redhat.com> [2014-01-02 07:13]:
>> On 01/01/2014 11:16 PM, Jack Bates wrote:
>> Hello!
>>
>>> Firefox complains "A plugin is needed to display this content." when I try to access Oracle Forms. I
>>> am running a fresh install of Ubuntu 13.10 plus the icedtea-6-plugin package, version 1.4. The
>>> plugin is detected by Firefox when I visit both about:addons and about:plugins
>>>
>>> I reduced the Oracle Forms landing page to this test case:
>>>
>>>     http://nottheoilrig.com/java/201306210
>>
>> Thank you for reproducer!
>>
>>> Firefox complains with the same error when I visit this test case ("A plugin is needed to display
>>> this content.") but the error goes away if I drop the "jpi-version" from the test case.
>>> Unfortunately I can't drop the "jpi-version" from the actual Oracle Forms landing page.
>>
>> This appeared to be more tricky then I thought at first. The
>> attached patch is fixing the reproducers behaviour, however there is
>> issue, that this type of definition requires exact hardccoded "_06"
>> in mime descripor.
>
> I am against doing this. The documentation[1] states:
>
> "The recommended usage of the <embed> tag is to not specify any version
> or jpi-version in the MIME type of the applet. Instead, use the
> java_version parameter to choose a particular JRE version upon which to
> run the applet."
>
> 1: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/index-141751.html#aJPI_VERSION
>
>  From what I can tell, Oracle Forms is essentially hardcoding the
> required JDK version which is a bad way to do things (especially since
> 1.6.0_06 was released in April 2008 and is extremely insecure).
>
> The proprietary Oracle plug-in only supplies a specific jpi-version that
> corresponds to the JDK it is shipped with, and not previous ones.
>
> The Oracle Forms app needs to be updated. I understand that the user has
> little say in this sometimes but I would really like to avoid changing
> ITW to accommodate badly written apps.

I understand not wanting to add support for a deprecated MIME type 
parameter to ITW, and wanting Oracle Forms to get current.

In general, from a user's perspective, even if an in-the-wild webapp 
used "application/x-java-applet;foo=bar" I would rather handle it with 
ITW than watch Firefox complain "A plugin is needed to display this 
content."
And especially so if ";foo=bar" worked in the past, and still worked on 
another common platform/environment (although deprecated).

I confirm that Oracle Forms runs well on Linux with Firefox and ITW. 
It's a pity it is hung up on a MIME type parameter. I wonder how many 
users are affected.

(I applied Jiri Vanek's patch, rebuilt ITW and confirm that Oracle Forms 
runs well. Thank you!)