Chapter 1. Introduction

As the popularity of the GNOME Desktop continues to grow, both inside and outside of the Linux community, more developers are going to be interested in targeting their applications for this environment. At the same time, the Java programming language is gaining followers. Java's object oriented capabilities, garbage collection, cross platform capabilities, and class libraries make it an ideal language for some application development.

It's only natural that some of the developers that are drawn to GNOME will want to develop in Java. The purpose of the Java-GNOME binding is to make this possible.

This tutorial assumes that you are not familiar with GTK or GNOME. More seasoned GNOMErs will find it very easy to learn this binding. Developer's that are new to this environment may want to also study the GTK and GNOME documentation. I will try to cover as much of this background as possible but I am sure to leave something out.

I would like to hear from anyone who uses this tutorial to learn Java-GNOME. Please let me know how I can improve this document and ease your learning curve.

This document is a work in progress. You can get the latest copy at the Java-GNOME home page