Re: Newbie - JAR question

Lee A. Wentzel wrote:
On Thu, 30 Aug 2007 12:34:58 -0700, a24900@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

No, you didn't. This is not a general solution, this is an ugly hack, and does not scale.

Ok, "does not scale" means what?

I guess a24900 means that unpacking Jars and repacking their contents
into your own jar gets a bit tedious if you have many jar files you need
to use. The easier way is to *list* the other jars in the manifest of your application's jar.


Your mistakes

You used a non-standard GUI element without recognizing that it wasn't part of standard Java.

It is an example from Sun's website the creators of Java if I am not
mistaken. (Although I most likely am.) If it isn't standard, what would be the correct way to do a GUI? I am a complete newbie to Java
which is why I was asking for assistance.

I think the swinglayout jar contains the class files for the GroupLayout
layout manager. If your JRE doesn't include GroupLayout then I guess it
isn't quite "standard" in the sense I would understand it.

http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/view/FaqPackagingMatisseBasedProjects

If you use one or more of the, er, more standard layouts, you wouldn't
need to include another jar in this way. The layouts I am thinking of
are FlowLayout, BorderLayout, BoxLayout, GridLayout and GridBagLayout.

I'm not saying these are more "correct", just more commonplace IMHO.


You don't understand the Java classpath, the Manifest classpath and
the way Java searches for classes.

You're right. I don't. Hence my calling myself a newbie.

There's no shame in being a newbie, I still consider myself a bit of a
newbie to Java. I try not to let my laziness be too obvious though :-)


And finally, you trashed Andrew when he was trying to help.

I don't believe I treated him any differently then he treated me.

I find that reacting to abhorrent behaviour by behaving abhorrently isn't usually useful. YMMV.


To quote Andrew "you waste your time, and our bandwidth."

To be fair to Andrew what he said was "Please do not 'paraphrase'
names when posting questions to groups, or you waste your time, and our
bandwidth."

Note the word "Please".

Note that he is saying that *if* you say "swing.jar" when you mean
"swinglayout.<version>.jar" then you are going to confuse or mislead
people who are trying to help you.


My question to him was legitimate.

Wasn't his answer legitimate? I think he did pretty well to guess your
problem and point you at some solutions?


Did he not understand what I was asking for?

It sounded like he wasn't sure. I wasn't.


I have been getting help from various news groups for over a decade.
Some are very helpful, others are full of pompous asses who like to
stroke their egos and let you know how worthless you are.

I say don't worry about the pomposity of asses. Let them stroke their
egos whilst you pick out any valuable bits of advice from their
postings. Ignore everything else. Win-Win. YMMV.

Like Andrew, I am keen to help people in this newsgroup. I have less
expertise but nonetheless I try to help. Sometimes I can't help because
the question is unclear. This can be frustrating for the would-be
helper. It is then natural to think - gee, If this poster had spent a
few more minutes composing a better question I'd be able to understand and help solve the problem.


My intentions were to get help with a language which seems like the best way to go given it's portability, not start a flame war about how I don't know how to ask a question intelligently. I don't.

Have you re-read http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
recently? I find it useful.


I don't know the terms. I am learning by 'hacking' as you suggested.
That is how I have learned every language I have dabbled in.

So if we are done pointing out my short comings,

I don't suppose we are :-) In your shoes, I'd try not to let it bother me.


Where can I find better examples then Sun's website to learn Java?

I don't know anywhere that's universally better. That doesn't mean you
can't find some bad examples at Sun's websites too :-)
.

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