Archive for January, 2008

Annoucing JFileContentManager 1.2!

A new version of JFileContentManager has been released! Below are the changes release:

  • The tree UI component was corrected to reflect the zip hierarchy content;
  • Added support to show the contents of:
    • Java files
    • Properties files
    • Shell script files
    • XHTML / HTML files
    • XML files
  • The About Dialog has been integrated with JDIC;

Check this out!

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Effective Java Programming with Joshua Bloch

Nice video from Joshua Block, Chief Java Architect at Google, talking about his Effective Java™ Programming Language Guide book and also about the consequences of adding new features on the Java language, like the closures’ proposals. He also offers an advice to the programmers, when designing API’s, classes or methods:

“When in doubt, leave it out”.

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Is Java on a evolutionary dead end way?

Artima is running an article where Bruce Eckel talks about about Java’s objective on backwards compatibilities and the problem of combinatorial complexity when you combine a new feature in every possible way with the other language features already present.

It’s the combinatorial complexity that you get when you combine a new feature in every possible way with the other language features. The combinatorial complexity can produce horrifying surprises, typically after the feature is added when it’s too late to do anything about it.

It’s clear Eckel is mentioning the Java closures’ proposals to become part of the language on the Java 7 and the major improvements occured when Java 5 appeared.

If Java is unwilling to break backwards compatibility, then it is inevitable that it will acquire both unproductive complexity and incomplete implementation of new features. I’ve made the case in Thinking in Java 4e that Java Generics are only a pale imitation of real generics, and one of the more appealing suggestions for closures is an incomplete implementation of true closures, but it would actually be preferable to a complete implementation because it produces clearer, more straightforward code.

I particularly agree with him, when he also says

Fundamental new features should be expressed in new languages, carefully designed as part of the ecosystem of a language, rather thanbeing inserted as an afterthought.

He also considers Scala as an alternative for the Java language. Eckel also declares

Java values backward compatibility over the clarity of its abstractions.

I don’t agree with him at this later point, the Collections’ framework is an example of good API design rules with a lot of well designed abstractions by Joshua Block, separating things that change from things that stay the same.

And you? What do u think about it? Should Scala be considered as an exit for Java?

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JFileContentManager has been released!

JFileContentManager is a Java based file manager desktop application, it can show, edit and manipulate the content of the files archived inside a zip.
Showing a simple and friendly GUI, the user can see the content archived inside a zip file in a tree view way, select one file per time and see their content (either text or image). It’s also possible to reopen the last opened zip files through the history option on the file menu.

Below are the current features:

  • See the zip files’ list in a tree view way;
  • Select one by one of the files and see their content (either text or image);
  • Open the last four opened zip files through the history option on the file menu and
  • Download the bundled executable Jar.

and future goals:

  • Support other file formats, like .tar, .tgz, .tar.gz, .gzip, .rar, .7z.
  • Edit the content of a text file;
  • Save the edition etiher inside the opened zip or at another location on the disk;
  • Select one or more files and zip them together;
  • Edit the image’s file content with the help of a picture toolbar and
  • Bundle the project in Java Web Start.

The project is released under the LGPL license. Misfit, rnaufal and roddy will be very proud and happy if you take a look at this project, running the application, downloading the source code on SVN and commenting about it. Thanks and enjoy!

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