[E-Lang] E, DRM, ENative, openCOLA, and other stuff

[Marc Stiegler]

> I've been reticent about getting down and dirty with Java for a while, but
the
> various "small Java" pieces that are coming out of Sun and others actually
have
> my interest. I've been playing with things like Wabasoft's Waba VM
> (http://www.wabasoft.com/), Sun's KVM (part of the J2ME, and more
specifically,
> the CDLC), and Sun's MIDP, along with a modified Java SDK from Research in
> Motion (http://www.rim.net/), a firm with heavy Canadian ties (they make
the
> BlackBerry email pagers). Naturally, this has me wondering about a microE
(uE
> ?) that would work on these sorts of devices. Anyone else have ideas in
this
> field?

I have been watching these things for a while, because I have a killer app
for the Palm Pilot that I want to write, but don't have time to fool with
until I have some decent tools. I have been slightly surprised and seriously
disappointed that Sun has been unable to release a coherent strategy for
user interface at this level. And at the end of the day you still need a
user interface--even in a distributed system with lots of headless servers,
at the end of the day someone has got to interact with the system for it to
be interesting. Without a coherent UI strategy it is pretty useless for
every application I've considered writing.

Waba has a coherent, if not very enticing, UI strategy, but until they can
handle exceptions they are not in the running for underpinning an E system.

Also remember that E still needs a substantial comm package. While not as
large as a full fledge java 1.2, it does detract some from the advantage of
these tiny vms.

If someone runs into a coherent detailed explanation of UI for KVM, please
let me know. For all I know, there might be such a description somewhere at
this point, it has been a month or so since last Iooked.

--marcs