Why on earth doesnt Sun...

[pepijnve]

The other thing that might be hard to get without a Mac is the .icns file that contains the icon for the application bundle.  If I knew the format of that file I would write a tool to build these app bundles in pure java...

Someone beat you to it

[Raghar]

Eclispe is a bad example, they have written thier own gui library to replace swing that interface to C++ code if I recall. Thats not java's fault, that was a developer decision within the eclipse community.

Azereus seems to do the same, just go to the download page, and you'll be able to select from like 10 different versions of Azereus.

IIRC Azureus uses SWT as well.

[swpalmer]

The other thing that might be hard to get without a Mac is the .icns file that contains the icon for the application bundle.  If I knew the format of that file I would write a tool to build these app bundles in pure java...

Someone beat you to it

Seems that goes in the other direction.  Takes Mac Icon files and gets the imgae from them.  It's also all about resource forks, which aren't used much anymore on the Mac.  I don't think the icon in a Application Bundle is contained exclusively in the resource fork an icon file- not at the Mac now to check.

Anyway, thanks for pointing it out.  It could be a good starting point for making a pure Java version of the apple "Jar Bundler"

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[pepijnve]

I've been digging through Apple's documentation and it seems that the contents of a icns file is identical to the contents of a icns resource fork. In other words icns file == icns resource in data fork.
I pointed to that program because it already contains decoders for icns and the other mac icon types. The only problem might be the license on the source code (QPL).
The best approach of course would be to find the spec for the icns format. Supposedly it's hidden in one of the old 'Inside Macintosh' documents, but so far I haven't been able to locate it.
From this article it seems that Rez (the resource compiler) should come with a bunch of headers that define the structure of these resources. I don't have my mac with me here, so I'll check once I get home.

[Jeff]

Well, there's always Java Webstart if you want a "standard" way of installing apps.

Beyond that there's Install Anywhere, which will give you an actual installer-like interface.

This is where Java Webstart comes in. It's pretty painless from the user's standpoint, if the .jnlp files is configured correctly. Sure, it's got it's issues, but so does everything else - it's one of the *many* challenges cross-platform development faces.

Thanks for your comments.

The thing with Java Webstart is that it's intended for starting applications from the web.

Not any more.

You can ship pre-loaded webstart cache.