[Freeciv-Dev] Re: curiosity

[Andrew Sutton <ansutton@xxxxxxx>]

On Friday 30 November 2001 06:26 pm, Gregor Zeitlinger wrote:
> Isn't there development on a java client? I don't know anything about it,
> I just saw that there is a mailing list. It would at least solve the GUI
> issue as only one would have to be maitained. Scripting is also available
> (JPyton for example), although I'm unqulified to compare. It might also be
> worth a thought to make the config file XML, or the client/server
> communication CORBA (might be too slow).

i have no qualms what soever about a java client. actually, i think it would 
be nice.

xml might be a good choice for a configuration language. i hadn't given it 
much thought... it would mean an additional dependency for both client and 
server. although, if the server uses ACE, there's work being done an XML DOM 
parser in addition to the networking stuff (can you tell i love this library?)

i'd thought about corba, but i think it might be a little too powerful for 
what we need. CORBA's also very, very dense in terms of code and learning 
curve. i'm using it for my work right now, and it hasn't been the easiest 
thing to deal with. although, ACE does come with it's own orb (TAO) which is 
supposed to be one of the fastest on the planet :) it's probably overkill for 
what we want - although it won't be too difficult to add a corba interface.

if we really wanted, we could specify the protocol in ASN.1 :) and use packed 
encoding rules for a nice concise message size :)

andy