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Adobe Announces Project to Port Java SWT to Cocoa

Adobe Announces Project to Port Java SWT to Cocoa

by , 6:00 PM EDT, June 10th, 2008

Sott Kovatch, Senior Computer Scientist of Adobe Systems, announced on Tuesday at WWDC that he will be leading a project to port Java SWT to Cocoa. He emphasized that the announcement is not under the WWDC NDA.

Mr. Kovatch said that while he won't be on the project full time until August, decent progress has been made so far. The plan is to get this into the Eclipse 3.5 stream. He also said that he expects to have two Adobe engineers working with him on the project and that Adobe expects to make good use of the technology in future Adobe projects.

For more information, visit: http://www.eclipse.org/swt/cocoaport.php .

TMO will provide more details as they become available.

Observer Comments

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Close Name:Guest
Subject: Because that's what the iPhone is missing...

A Java environment.... And they have to make sure it all compiles into a single executable [both libraries and app code], otherwise Apple won't let you load it onto the iPhone.

Close Name:jimothy Posts: 612 Joined: 04 Jun 2004
Subject: re: What the iPhone is missing.

This has nothing to do with the iPhone. Eclipse is, ostensibly, a platform for building desktop applications, but most people think of it as an IDE (integrated development environment) for developing Java applications, and that's how it gets most of it's use. SWT (Standard Widget Toolkit) is a cross platform collection of "widgets," or UI elements, and a way to build GUIs.

On the Mac, SWT is implemented via Carbon. Porting it to Cocoa may bring several benefits, but running on the iPhone is not one of them. SWT applications still require Java, which the iPhone doesn't have. This is likely a way to keep up with the progress of Mac OS X, and Cocoa appears to be the preferred application framework there. If rumors are to believed, Snow Leopard will make this even clearer.

Close Name:jimothy Posts: 612 Joined: 04 Jun 2004
Subject: More corrections

The man's name is Scott Kovatch, and unless something has changed since November, he employed by Apple, not Adobe.

http://inside-swt.blogspot.com/2007/11/hacking-at-apple.html

EDIT: Corrected my own spelling mistake, of Scott's last name.



Last edited by jimothy on Thu Jun 12, 2008 10:15 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Close Name:Guest
Subject: Eclipse / Flex Builder

Adobe are already using Eclipse for their Flex builder product, and it would make sense, given the popularity of the IDE, for it to also be the basis of their other developer, rather than designer, oriented tools.

Given that Apple have given clear signs that Carbon will eventually be deprecated (starting with lack of 64-bit support) someone in the Eclipse consortium is going to have to lead an effort to port SWT - SWT is not part of the standard Java platform but an alternative widget toolkit).

Close Name:Guest
Subject: Kovatch

Scott's last name is indeed Kovatch according to his LinkedIn profile, and has been at Adobe since March of this year.

Close Name:jimothy Posts: 612 Joined: 04 Jun 2004
Subject: Kovatch

Oops, my intent was to correct the spelling of his first name, and when doing so, I misspelled his last name. My apologies!

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