[ImageJ-devel] MacOSX platform service issues

[Barry DeZonia]

Sure thing Johannes. Thanks.


On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 9:41 PM, Johannes Schindelin <schindelin at wisc.edu>wrote:

> Hi Barry,
>
> thanks for bringing the issue to my attention that my recent fix for Fiji
> (which now relies on ij-legacy to do the legacy patching in the hope that
> we can stabilize the code better that has been moved from fiji-compat to
> reconcile the Fiji and ImageJ2 legacy patches) broke the MacOSX-specific
> platform service startup.
>
> The issue is that when dropping a file (in particular, an image file) onto
> the Fiji (or for that matter, ImageJ) icon, contrary to widespread belief,
> MacOSX does *not* pass the path of said file to the program to-be-started
> via the command-line. Instead, it sends a platform-specific message that
> applications are expected to consume in a special, MacOSX-specific
> handler.
>
> You could call that a Cupertino time tax.
>
> Now, ImageJ 1.x solves this by adding an ApplicationListener. It has to --
> despite fact that the ApplicationListener is deprecated in very recent
> MacOSX versions -- to maintain backwards-compatibility with the last
> MacOSX versions supporting PowerPC-based computers.
>
> ImageJ2, in contrast, targets MacOSX 10.6 or newer, so it uses the new
> method -- which astonishingly does not allow adding ApplicationListeners,
> hence the problem you observed where the MacAdapter of ImageJ 1.x
> registering itself prevents ImageJ2 from starting up.
>
> The topic branch I started is designed to help the issue for 10.6 and
> newer by having a custom solution for the legacy mode: it registers an
> event listener and reacts upon the -- now platform-independent -- events.
>
> The only thing I need to change on that branch is to ensure that the
> MacOSX-specific part of the platform service starts up correctly and
> handles the MacOSX-specific event handling, delegating to the
> platform-independent event service of ImageJ2.
>
> After that, I still have to ascertain that things work correctly with
> MacOSX 10.5, the oldest MacOSX version I care to support with Fiji (10.4
> is too old because Apple limited the Java versions available for that
> MacOSX version to Java 1.4 -- which is really, really too limiting, not to
> mention old and slow).
>
> In essence: I ask you to have a little more patience while I work out a
> fix.
>
> Ciao,
> Johannes
>
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