Meetings: January 2004
• Meetings
• Basic Concepts
• Archives
• A Programmer's Guide to Java Certification from Addison-Wesley (2 copies)
• The Java Developers Almanac 1.4 from Addison-Wesley (1 copy)
• Long-sleeve cotton shirt from Addison-Wesley (1 shirt)
• Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for J2EE from Osborne (2 copies)
• E-book from Manning Publications
• $20 gift certificate from Softpro Books
• SCJP simulator from Whizlabs
- 5:30-6 p.m. Food and Networking
- 6-7 p.m. Basic Concepts (see details below)
- 7-7:15 p.m. Break and Announcements
- 7:15-8:15 p.m. Main Speaker (see details below)
- 8:15-8:30 p.m. Questions and Answers
Main Speaker
Exploring the Middle Ground Between HTML and Swing
Dave Curry
7:15-8:30 p.m. Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Location: Qwest Auditorium ( map)
Cost: Free
Description:
Conventional wisdom gives J2EE architectures two basic choices for the user interface: HTML or Swing. That's like eating at a restaurant that only has two items on the menu: the "Cottage Chesse Plate" and the "Triple Elvis Burger with the Curly Cheez Fries." In real life there are many applications for which HTML will be too slow or limited while Swing will be too cumbersome.
This session will briefly examine typical strategies for addressing this gap (enriching HTML with XML and JavaScript or deploying Swing using the Java Plug-in or Java Web Start) in the context of their actual use in a mission-critical brokerage application. We will discuss how JavaServer Faces and Struts, useful as they are in some applications, address development issues rather than the user experience. Then we will turn to a review of the various thin-client alternatives such as Classic Blend, ULC, Droplets and Thinlets, exploring the pros and cons of each.
Speaker
David Curry is Director of Systems Development for ADP/SIS, part of the ADP Brokerage Services Group. He and his team use J2EE with DHTML, XML and Swing to develop mission-critical desktop productivity applications for brokerage and bond trading firms. David has twenty years of software development experience and is a member of the ADP Technology Fellows program.
Resources
200401_swing.zip (presentation)
Basic Concepts
The 6 p.m. session is for learning basic concepts. Questions are encouraged. Come early and stay for the main presentation, which is focused on more advanced concepts. Registration is not required and there is no registration fee.
Basic Concepts: XSL-FO
Tom McQueeney
6-7 p.m. Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Location: Qwest Auditorium ( map)
Cost: Free
Description:
This talk introduces XSL-FO, a W3C specification to define how a
document should look when printed. It frequently is used in the web
world to create PDF documents on the fly from dynamic content.
The "FO" in XSL-FO stands for "formatting objects." FO is to the printed
page what HTML is for a web page. That is, instead of defining how a
document should look when displayed electronically, FO defines how a
document should look when printed to sheets of paper.
FO is an XML language and will look familiar to web designers. There are
equivalents to DIV, SPAN, TABLE, TR, TD and other HTML tags, and FO tag
attributes look a lot like Cascading Style Sheets attributes. But FO
adds tags unique to the printing world. There are tags to define page
regions so you can add headers and footers. There are "keep together"
attributes for widow/orphan control. There are tags to define page
layouts for different types of pages, such as formatting odd-numbered
pages differently than even-numbered pages.
The goal behind XSL-FO is to define how a page should look independent
of what prints the page. A FO document should look the same whether sent
to a Postscript printer, a PCL printer, converted to PDF or Word. But in
order to render a FO document, you need an XSL-FO processor to translate
FO to a printable format. FO processors are getting better, but have
been the weakest link in achieving this output-neutral goal. The
examples in this presentation will use Apache FOP, a free FO processor
that excels in creating PDF documents.
Speaker:
Tom McQueeney is a consultant for Idea Integration in Denver,
specializing in Java architecture and J2EE software projects. He is a
Sun certified enterprise architect, Java developer and EJB component
developer.
Resources:
Download 200401_xslfo.zip (presentation)
Download 200401_xslfo_code.zip (code)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xsl-fo/
W3C XSL specification
Apache: FOP
Apache: Basic Help for Using XML, XSLT, and XSL-FO
Sourceforge: jfor.org, Open-Source Java XSL-FO to RTF converter
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