[Fling] Some initial thoughts

[Scott Hyndman]

Hey guys,

Here are some thoughts off the top of my head.

ClassLoader implementation

Obviously our implementation will have to differ quite a bit. Things
like findClass() can be easily implemented, but others like
loadClass() don't really make a lot of sense (unless we can split up
class swfs like Ariaware Optimizer does...which isn't really
reasonable). More likely we're going to have to go with a
loadLibrary() idea, which is enough...although at the moment I'm not
sure how this will fit into the Swing architecture and what changes
will have to be made.

Maybe we could go so far as associating different packages with swfs,
so a loadClass triggers the loading of the associated library swf if
necessary. We could do it in a cool hierarchy-based way with
overrides...so something like:

"org.actionstep" - actionstep.swf
"org.actionstep.rpc" - rpc.swf

So if I ask for "org.actionstep.NSButton", actionstep.swf will be loaded.
The same for "org.actionstep.binding.NSKeyValueObserving" but if I ask for
"org.actionstep.rpc.ASOperation" the rpc swf will be loaded. Pretty
flexible I think...but again, we'd have to see how well this fits into
the Swing architecture.

Exception handling

Since this is a Java framework, I think it would be in our best
interest to offer some rigid exception handling. ActionStep has some
interesting methods for dealing with stack traces by using trace()
which we could rip out. I've always loved detailed exceptions when I'm
developing an application, so it would be nice if we could do the
same. Basically what this means is we must use try-catches at every
entry point (any callback method) and maybe offer some
application-level exception handlers.

That's it for now. My plane leaves in a few hours, so I'd best get
packing. Talk to you in a couple weeks!

Scott