Lively Kernel and Documancer

Dec 04

Tag: Javascript, Links, Linux, Programming, Web — Abhijeet Maharana @ 10:47 pm

Lively Kernel

From being used in web pages to add “some” interactivity to being used in a web based “kernel”, Javascript has come a long way. A team at SUN has developed a kernel that provides an execution environment for applications meant for the browser. From the Sun Labs Lively Kernel page, “The Sun Labs Lively Kernel is a new web programming environment developed at Sun Microsystems Laboratories. The Lively Kernel supports desktop-style applications with rich graphics and direct manipulation capabilities, but without the installation or upgrade hassles that conventional desktop applications have.” Written entirely in Javascript, the Lively Kernel emphasizes on treating Web applications as real applications and aims to build a platform using a minimum number of technologies. So its Javascript for most of the things.

It comes with the ‘Morphic’ graphic library which was originally written for the ‘Self’ system at Sun. From the same page, “Morphic is a user interface framework that supports composable graphical objects, along with the machinery required to display and animate these objects, handle user inputs, and manage underlying system resources such as displays, fonts and color maps. A key goal of Morphic is to make it easy to construct and edit interactive graphical objects, both by direct manipulation and from within programs.”

It even includes an IDE that allows JavaScript applications to be inspected and modified from within the system itself. It is currently supported on Safari 3.0.3 public beta release. Runs on Firefox but has a lot of related nasty bugs and locked my browser. IE support is yet to be added.

Screenshot (image is located at SUN’s site)

Documancer

This is an invaluable tool in any programmer’s toolkit. It is a documentation browser which supports HTML, DevHelp, Info pages, Manual pages, remote WWW sites and pydoc. But the feature that got me hooked is the full-text search. Specially when it comes to HTML documentation such as those created with javadoc. Documentation for the Java APIs is also available in WinHelp and HTMLHelp formats which enable searching. But for other libraries which use javadoc to generate their documentation, it is a pain to search for something. Specially when you are new to the library. That is where this gem shines.

Its UI is based on Gecko, Mozilla’s HTML rendering engine and it presents documentation of all formats in the same way. It supports bookmarks as well. It is implemented in wxPython and is available for Unix and Windows. It comes with a nice installer which takes care of all dependencies.

Abhijeet Maharana