[CoLoCo] Having troubles with Alice....

[Kevin Fries]


> Hi Neal,
> 
> It's me, not Ringo, that has the problems with Alice.  I agree with
> you on applauding the work on GCJ that people did.  I'm not a big fan
> of Sun, nor Java, but it is THE language for the AP Computer Science
> curriculum, so I need to know the official compilers from Sun.  I wish
> the College Board would allow multiple languages, as Python would be a
> great language for the APCS class.  The Python Edu-sig has been
> pushing for that for a long time.  Mostly we bite the bullet and teach
> Java, although behind the scenes we complain about it a lot :-).
> 
> Kevin, I am using the official Sun Java versions, btw, and the problem
> still exists.  I'll keep experimenting on it.  


I just installed it on my system at work, which is used for Java
development, so it has a full Java implementation.

It seems to run, though I really did not take the time to understand the
program too much.  But I created a scene with a Haunted House and a
Merri-Go-Round.  It let me move items around and pan the camera in lots
of different directions.  So I assume it was working OK.  I did notice
that the mouse did not track as well as I would have liked, but nothing
I have not seen in other programs on both Linux and Windows.

I also noticed on the install page a big possible sink-hole of trouble
(Neal better?, lol)... OpenGL.  Some video cards handle OpenGL better
than others.  The Windows version may use ActiveX for 3D in order to
bypass the normal OpenGL problems, a common tactic in Windows
programming.  Since Linux will not handle ActiveX (oh come on Neal, can
I at least curse at ActiveX?, lol) it would have to fall back to OpenGL.

What type of video card are you running?  This machine is a Dell D6200
with an Intel 945 I think.

[Neal, I am just teasing you.  GJC is one of those project that
irritates me because I feel it pulls good developers away from Bug #1.
It was a stupid political answer to an even more stupid political
problem in this case.  But it served its purpose, and should have been
de-forked and reconciled some time ago, and those warriors sent against
another industry bully holding back Linux like Logitech.  And, the only
thing that really annoys me about Ubuntu is that it uses these projects
as default instead of industry standards.  My frustration comes from the
fact that I feel these are fights that detract from showing Windows
users that often they can run the same software on Linux, giving us an
argument of "What are you paying for?".  In the past, I have taken heat
over this same argument with gnash and evince.  I believe all of these
projects detract the limited resources, re-inventing the wheel more to
prove we can, rather than we should.  My frustration with these poor
defaults caused me to use less than optimal wording this morning.]

-  
Kevin Fries
Senior Linux Engineer
Computer and Communications Technology, Inc
A Division of Japan Communications Inc.


On Mon, 2008-06-16 at 11:29 -0600, Richard Guenther wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 8:36 AM, Neal McBurnett
> <neal at bcn.boulder.co.us> wrote:
>         
>         I bet it is the extraordinary efforts of the GCJ folks that
>         have
>         forced Sun's hand in starting to release Java as open source,
>         and we
>         all benefit from that.
> 

> Richard
> 
>  
> 
>