🚀 go-pugleaf

Carl Moser wrote:
> 
> Joi,
>   I'm relatively new with Java but have been intensely
> trying to learn this language for the past 2 months.
>   One thing that is troubling to me is all the "fixes"
> that each user may have to face.  These direct X and
> video driver problems users are likely to face
> could be a support nightmare.  Is there an end to this
> madness?

I don't think developers will *ever* escape the problem
of buggy hardware drivers when pushing the envelope.
After all, when you're getting fragged in Quake, you're
too busy to notice a few DirectDraw glitches in the video.
This sort of problem is so prevalent with Windows that I
ditched the whole thing and moved to linux.

>   Regarding my PC -- I have updated the Video Driver and
> reinstalled DirectX.  I got JBuilder to properly display
> by changing the 'vmparam" in jdk.config.  

I assume you mean you added the ...noddraw thing.

> Now when I
> run a simple application from the command line such as
> java -jar swing-1.jar, the video gets corrupted when I
> mouse over menu items.  Do you think the -D option is needed
> as JBuilder as an IDE works ok now?

Are you using the Intellimouse goodies like animated cursors
and mouse trails?  If so, try turning all of those goodies
off and go back to basic mouse display.  That's a known cause of
problems with JVM video, too. 

If JBuilder paints okay when you use the noddraw thing, then
yes, you'll have to add it to the invocation of every java
program you run with that JDK on that machine.  That likely
includes JBuilder apps run inside JBuilder, too.  (IE add it
to each project's own properties file.)  I believe 
JBuilder actually fires off a fresh JVM for each run tab,
and I don't know if it passes its own parameters to the
fresh copies.

If this were my machine I'd be poking around the JDK looking
for some place I could force it to add the noddraw thing
automatically, everywhere, so I wouldn't have to remember.

It's also worth sticking in a README file for your users.
You *could* use it by default in your application and tell 
users they can try turning it off for better speed.  


--
Joi Ellis                    Software Engineer
Aravox Technologies          joi@aravox.com, gyles19@visi.com

No matter what we think of Linux versus FreeBSD, etc., the one thing I
really like about Linux is that it has Microsoft worried.  Anything
that kicks a monopoly in the pants has got to be good for something.
           - Chris Johnson