[isabelle-dev] NEWS: New (co)datatype package is now in Main

[Makarius]

On Thu, 23 Jan 2014, Lawrence Paulson wrote:

> I still use it sometimes, but it could be better. I don’t think the 
> quality of the layout is actually that important.

You can actually try the "graphview" right now by searching on this 
mailing list, when it was announced.  That quickly lead to the observation 
of practical unusability, though.


> Part of the problem is that, these days, you have to jump through a 
> dozen hoops just to enable Java in a web browser.

The Java applet was done in 1996 as an experiment to see if that is a way 
to get gradually more and more user-interface components for Isabelle. 
Times have changed a lot since then, and Java applets are generally out, 
due to severe security problems.  Oracle still fights a lost war there, 
and produces "critical-patch updates" for JDK quite often, e.g. JDK 7u51 
just a few days ago.  (Problems are usually for applets, web-start, or 
application servers, occasionally attacks on the regular download and 
install process.)

We are still on the relatively old jdk-7u40 from last year, since none of 
the patches are criticial for us, because Isabelle/Scala and 
Isabelle/jEdit are normal local applications.

As Isabelle/jEdit becomes more and more capable to do traditional 
"browsing" of theory libraries, the old static web pages might be 
de-emphasized further.


 	Makarius