OpenJFX initiative

Sat Sep 23 14:14:15 UTC 2017

I must have missed the bit where you described a proposed roadmap.

I think for the most part I've seen JavaFX used as a means of keeping older
Swing-based projects alive. In the enterprise, those projects are
dwindling, in part because people just rebuild them as web applications.
It's easier to find that kind of talent, than it is to find desktop
developers.

The applications that remain desktop applications tend to require either
access to your desktop OS, or need near realtime access to streams of
audio, video, telemetry or financial data, which makes them ill-suited to
be web apps.

The reason that there's little interest in WebGL or 3d is because it
doesn't fit into one of the enterprise app buckets listed above.

I'm still surprised when people tell me that they have to write mobile apps
in Java and Swift and maintain two codebases, and when I point them to
JavaFX they admit they've never heard of it.

There needs to be better promotion of JavaFX in the Java developer
community. People need to compare the degree of complexity of web component
and PWA development against JavaFX to see the advantages. And there needs
to be a better deployment story than web start.

A lot of that is simply promotion. It means reaching out to web development
and mobile development communities, and giving talks and demos.

Mark

On 22 Sep 2017 5:32 p.m., "John-Val Rose" <johnvalrose at gmail.com> wrote:

Probably, but JEPs can take a lot of time from start to finish and time is
itself perhaps the biggest enemy that JavaFX is facing.

And how many JEPs are being initiated by the Oracle JavaFX team
themselves?  I mean for the specific purpose of *true* innovation?

On 23 September 2017 at 10:24, Nir Lisker <nlisker at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't have any answer to those questions. A JEP is the only thing I can
> think of.
>
> On Sat, Sep 23, 2017 at 3:19 AM, John-Val Rose <johnvalrose at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Yes, well I'm sure there's a lot of truth to that as Johan has
>> demonstrated.
>>
>> But, I think it's a bit of an over simplification.
>>
>> How do I know if *my* innovation (of say 9 months of effort) is
"high-quality
>> code that makes OpenJFX better"?
>>
>> I can do my best to write high-quality code but what exactly does "make
>> OpenJFX better" mean? *I* might think it's better with WebGL and advanced
>> 3D features but it seems most people disagree or are ambivalent towards
>> such functionality.
>>
>> Who gets to say what does or doesn't get integrated?  And, how do I know
>> *before* I potentially waste my effort whether it will or won't "make
>> OpenJFX better" or be integrated?
>>
>> 
>> Graciously,
>>
>> John-Val Rose
>> Chief Scientist/Architect
>> Rosethorn Technology
>> Australia
>>
>> On 23 September 2017 at 09:08, Nir Lisker <nlisker at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> > What do you mean by “go with Johan Vos’s experience”?
>>>
>>> What he said here: http://mail.openjdk.java
>>> .net/pipermail/openjfx-dev/2017-September/020801.html.
>>>
>>> On Sat, Sep 23, 2017 at 12:08 AM, John-Val Rose <johnvalrose at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The concept of “innovation” no longer seems to apply to JavaFX, at
>>>> least not from Oracle’s perspective.
>>>>
>>>> If you read the official list of changes in the just-released Java 9,
>>>> AWT (yes, AWT) has more changes than JavaFX and even then the only
>>>> significant change is to make it Jigsaw compatible.
>>>>
>>>> A product like this needs a very clear “roadmap” of development and
>>>> introduction of new features but the link on the Oracle JavaFX
>>>> Documentation page for “roadmap” leads to a place known as “404”. I
hope
>>>> that’s not a room number in “Hotel California”.
>>>>
>>>> So, innovation for JavaFX falls back as a community responsibility but
>>>> is very difficult without any cooperation from Oracle themselves.
>>>>
>>>> I personally have not been able to get any response from them except
>>>> “float your ideas on the mailing list to see what interest there is”.
Note,
>>>> that “interest” is only from the community itself... and then what?
>>>>
>>>> What do you mean by “go with Johan Vos’s experience”? Yes, he and Gluon
>>>> are fantastic innovators and have built a small company of top-notch
talent
>>>> and are able to crank-out new products and enhancements with impressive
>>>> frequency.
>>>>
>>>> Are you suggesting we all start similar companies? Johan is a former
>>>> Oracle employee and probably has a well-established relationship with
them
>>>> and access to knowledge that others don’t. Personally, I love what he’s
>>>> doing and hope Gluon expands rapidly to enable as much innovation as
>>>> possible.
>>>>
>>>> But what about the rest of us? What are we supposed to do? How do we
>>>> get large-scale changes to happen?
>>>>
>>>> Well, I don’t know. But we’re better as a team than a bunch of
>>>> individuals each trying to get some feature implemented in an
uncoordinated
>>>> fashion.
>>>>
>>>> The other real issue is that everyone seems to have their own
>>>> perspective on exactly what JavaFX is or should be. That makes the
>>>> community ineffective unless someone manages innovation for JavaFX in
>>>> general.
>>>>
>>>> I’d be happy to be that person but sadly, it’s not for me to make that
>>>> call. Johan is like the de facto “Head of Innovation for JavaFX” at the
>>>> moment but he has his own agenda (mainly in the mobile space) and
monetises
>>>> his efforts.
>>>>
>>>> That’s what businesses do.
>>>>
>>>> So, I think we need to firstly establish just what JavaFX is *now*
>>>> (even this is not clear) and also what it *should be* (where we
coalesce
>>>> everyone’s own ideas) so we can move forward.
>>>>
>>>> That is of course *if* JavaFX is actually going to “move forward”
>>>> rather than “sideways”.
>>>>
>>>> Honestly though, if you’re not moving forward, you are really going
>>>> backward as you watch the rest of the world disappear over the
horizon...
>>>>
>>>> Graciously,
>>>>
>>>> John-Val Rose
>>>>
>>>> > On 22 Sep 2017, at 22:38, Nir Lisker <nlisker at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > I didn't see any update on the idea for our initiative. Are we still
>>>> waiting for a reply from Oracle or do we go with Johan Vos's
experience?
>>>> >
>>>> > I think that the least we can do without putting any work into this
>>>> is have a semi-formal list of people who would like to work on this
and a
>>>> list of what features we would be working on. I feel that I still don't
>>>> know the scope of what we are trying to do, only pieces of it.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>