I've been playing around with the latest JAVA for OS/2 (files are dated
12/19/96) release and am very disappointed. I borrowed a copy of "Core
Java",
published by SunSoft to learn the language. However I discovered some apparent
and basically serious bugs. (Note that I have a dual bootable Warp 3.0 / WinNT
3.51 system -- the only way I could read the example files off of the book's
CD was to use NT since they were packed in a nonstandard format!)

1. The examples in the book (and indeed my observation running the examples
   under NT) have the origin coordinates of a frame in the upper-left corner
   of the client region. Java OS/2 places the origin in the upper-left corner
   of the frame, which is in the upper left corner of the title bar! Needless
   to say, this messes up virtually every JavaPM program!

2. Fonts smaller than 14pt display as 14pt. Only Helvetica, TimesRoman, and
   Courier fonts can be selected even though I have many others installed.

3. For all the work IBM say's they've done to Java, it runs 2 to 2.5 times
   slower than Sun's port under NT.

I'm only a third of the way through the book -- no telling what I'll find in
the remainding 2/3.

I'm really disgusted by all of this! I love OS/2 but as a software development
platform it's really falling behind. If this is the best IBM can do for a
language that is their last hope for OS/2 as a viable platform, it's time to
wipe it from my drive. :-(

The development environment is crude, only slightly better than running the
JDK under NT (and that only because the WPS is more powerful than anything
Microsoft offers). However IDEs are being developed for NT (Symantec Cafe,
Borland C++ (5.0 has Java support), and Microsoft J++ (yea, I know!) are
around) yet what is there even proposed for OS/2? Nothing mentioned on the IBM
site.

Tom


--- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30