Ken wrote:

> Jon A. Cruz wrote:
>
> > Well, if people really needed cross-platform 'dll's, you could always go
> > the route of setting up JNI hooks and writing the 'dll' in Java. That way
> > you'd have bytecodes that would run on many platforms. (Or maybe...
> > POV-Ray could be made to call a Java method. That Java method could be
> > set up to in turn call a platform-specific native module via JNI, or just
> > fall back to a pure Java implementation, and could even switch
> > dynamically at run-time. Arrrggghhh! No.....! Stop!!! my head hurts....)
> >
> > Of course, with the speed factor and all, especially with raytracing, I
> > would definitely say don't do that. Just stick to good clean C.
> >
>
> To quote Chris Young concerning Pov a Jave:
>
> WHAT LANGUAGE TO USE?  WHEN?  HOW?
>         As I mentioned earlier, we originally planned that our next
> release would be a major rewrite in C++ however we had lots of input
> from users and team members that a compiled Java rewrite might be a
> good alternative.  In the 18 months since that debate, Java has not
> fulfilled its promise to unite the world in the peaceful harmony of a
> single, portable language.  The whole industry (not just Microsoft) is
> doing things to ruin Java.  Enough politics... Java is out.  We're
> sticking with our original plan for C++.
>

Yes. But that's for the main program itself. I fully agree with that decision,
especially for the performance needed for raytracing. I was just mentioning
that Java could in essence be used as a glue layer for 'dlls' or plugins that
could have the same bytes work on different platforms. For POV-Ray, however, it
would probably not be worth it. (thus my general tounge in cheek mention of
it).

But.... To see something like this in action, you can see Java interfaced with
Quake at http://www.openquake.org/jquake/

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