>Mmmm... >So nobody is using Java? Where does he live? >And if he doesn't say what's the alternative, is this assertion trustable? > >I understood that iPhone uses plain MacOSX, so how is Java prevented >from working? Do they block installation? What happens with other plugins, >like Flash? Can't the browser be supplemented? > >I was also expecting to see Jmol in such a truly portable support!
I ask this question because of eg the American Chemical Society, and their "Web enhanced object". This could increasingly augment the traditional "figure" in many articles, and the ACS sees Jmol as a crucial program in the WEO. However, I have been asked questions such as "what is the lifetime of a WEO", and what happens in eg 10 years time when the Java virtual engine is no longer installed/supported on the majority of Web browsers. I, like most people on this list, thought that Java would have at least 10 years lifetime (it is 11 years old this year) left in it. So when Steve Jobs declares it is hardly used, and that his vision of the next generation of portable computer (the iPhone is the first of a whole new generation of such) does not include it, I find it much more difficult to answer the ACS' concerns about the lifetime of a WEO based on eg Jmol. I am minded of a similar problem. When Chime was introduced, 12 years ago, a whole "ecosystem" of web pages arose based on it, most magnificently Eric Martz's protein explorer. Chime was in the hands of a single vendor, and when they chose not to support it, resources such as protein explorer faced a major task in "moving house", which of course they have done, to Jmol! Java is also a single-vendor product (Sun!), although Egon tells us it might become opensource, unlike Chime. But, repositioning Jmol into a new programming language is going to be an interesting task. I wonder if we will be able to rely on something like f2c for converting eg Fortran to C? -- Henry Rzepa. +44 (020) 7594 5774 (Voice); +44 (0870) 132 3747 (eFax); [EMAIL PROTECTED] (iChat) http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College London, SW7 2AZ, UK. (Voracious anti-spam filter in operation for received email. If expected reply not received, please phone/fax). ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Jmol-users mailing list Jmol-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/jmol-users
