Home Page Commentary 10 July 1999

Comment of the Fortnight
10 July 1999
Java / Olympus C-2000Z Digital Camera

I'm starting to write some software under Linux for my own amusement, and was debating which language to use:

• C with GTK (GNOME toolkit)
• C++ with Qt (the toolkit from TrollTech)
• Tcl/Tk
• Java with the Swing user interface classes

I decided to use Java, because:

• GTK (as far as I know) works only with Linux/Unix systems
• I've never really understood the ins and outs of C++ very well
• Although Tcl and Tk let you do many wonderful things in a short amount of code, I'm not sure I want to learn yet another computer language.
• I've written in Java before, and its model of doing object-oriented programming somehow seems clearer than that of C++.
• The Swing interface is advanced enough to make it fairly easy to write applications. For example, its JScrollPane class takes care of most of the “heavy lifting” involved with making a scrollable view of a document with only a few short lines of code.

I'll keep you posted.

Another Digital Camera?

Yes, I have yet another digital camera. I decided that the picture quality wasn't enough to overcome the major user interface problem with the Epson 750Z, so I went for the Olympus C-2000Z.

While the camera costs more than the Epson, it produces great 1600 x 1200 pictures, it's very compact (fits in the palm of my hand when the zoom lens is retracted), and the user interface is wonderful. This is a camera that works with me, rather than being a camera that I have to work to use.

Here are some pictures from the San Francisco Gay Pride celebration Don't worry; they are all G-rated.

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