From lechner  Wed Dec 11 01:09:07 2002
Subject: Re: bde2Java project - status update - 
	thanks for the good work on bde2java.
To: DShea@Kronos.com (Shea, Daniel)
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 01:09:05 -0500 (EST)
RJLRef: $PH/COOL-BDE/bde2java/02f522bde2java_ds_ql.021211

> From DShea@Kronos.com  Wed Dec 11 00:08:54 2002
> From: "Shea, Daniel" <DShea@Kronos.com>
> To: "'lechner@cs.uml.edu'" <lechner@cs.uml.edu>
> Cc: "'bostonese@yahoo.com'" <bostonese@yahoo.com>
> Subject: bde2Java project - status update
> Prof. Lechner,
> 
> Just wanted to update you on the status of our project. We started by
> writing a new set of UI framework classes using swing components and a
> standard Java Applet architecture (applet, root panel, GUIController and
> DataManager classes) - I use this architecture at work so I took the lead in
> getting this started. After getting the meat of those classes written and
> compiled cleanly we took the somewhat more difficult task of porting the
> bulk of the old code into our new framework(bde components, such as
> bdeGraph, bdeNode, etc..., which contain all the required information both
> for drawing the graphics onscreen and saving them in the proper format to a
> .dat file). This took a very long time - much longer than expected (~15-20
> hours?). But we now have a clean build using JDK 1.3.1 with no deprecation
> warnings. 
> 
> The next step was to get the functionality working - as of tonight
> (12/10/02) the code can be run in both application and applet modes and
> drawing new nodes is the only functionality working (other than selecting
> New from the File menu). A small unanticipated problem we ran into was that
> it turns out that the old code was using the Java 1.0 event model and a new
> event model was created in Java in JDK1.1 and up. So we are beginning to
> port to that. Getting the nodes to draw onscreen was the first step in that
> regard - I expect the other functionality to be easier to adapt now that we
> have a model to work from.
> 
> It is already easy to see much better performance as it turns out the old
> code was using a very expensive "infinite" loop to paint its graphics like
> this:
> 
> public void run()
>     {
> 	repaint();
> 
> 	while(true)
>         {
> 	    try
>             {
> 		Thread.sleep(100);
> 	    }
>             catch (InterruptedException e)
>             {
> 		break;
> 	    }
>        	}
>         repaint();
>     }   /* run() - end */
> 
> I don't know if this was needed in the old event model - I'm not familiar
> with that one - but we no longer need this in the new event model. Anyway,
> we are encouraged that we will be able to at least get the project to equal
> UI functionality as the previous release but with much better performance
> and both applet and application modes working. We have begun using packages
> (client, server, shared) for the code to begin the task of working towards
> client/server, but I'm not sure how much time will allow us to further this
> effort. 
> 
> I plan on uploading the latest source to my Web directory Wed. AM so you can
> run what we have so far.
> 
> Thanks,
> Dan Shea and Qiang Li 
>