Sun, meanwhile, is trying to reinvigorate the NetBeans effort, which forms the basis for its own commercial development tools. Other tools companies, such as Borland and BEA Systems, are also largely keeping their distance from Eclipse to concentrate on their own tool strategies.
Although many industry observers and developers believe a single system for tying together Java development tools would benefit the Java camp in its ongoing market share battle with Microsoft, some think multiple Java tools platforms can coexist.
"To effectively compete with Microsoft and promote Windows and .Net alternatives, there need to be strong offerings (from Java tool makers). Eclipse and NetBeans are two strong offerings," said Tom Rhinelander, an analyst at research company New Rowley Group.
Last month, several Java software companies formed the Java Tools Community (JTC), which is an organisation to promote tools and tool interoperability in the Java standards process. Those Java standards should be adopted by Eclipse and help ease some of the technical differences between tools, according to JTC and Eclipse members.
While Java providers jockey among themselves for greater control over the direction of tools, Eclipse open-source programmers are forging ahead with enhancements to the Eclipse software, which are expected to be discussed next week at the EclipseCon conference in California. Eclipse 3.0, a new version of the base software, is slated for release in June and is expected to improve the Eclipse development environment to make it easier to customise and simpler to learn.
The planned update will also seek to make the Eclipse software more appropriate for "rich client" applications, or applications that can draw on the processing power of PCs for graphics or data aggregation.
With the enhancements, developers will be able to build and use rich client applications that draw on the look and feel of different operating systems. The Eclipse software will act as a container for different plug-ins, much like a Web browser, according to Eclipse.
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Thanks You folks what more can i say .I time traveled and paradoxed today scary but ausume I have the site for ADAM and EVE two of the worlds largest computers to manage the national debit card bill Under the name New Era yes the electronic commerce bill umm hummm so we plan to form a new state in northern wisconsin north of highway 29 The name of this new state is of course NEW ERA the 51st State location of The National debit card center Senator Kohl and Finegold will be the founders of this bill.Granite protection for Adam and Eve like norad but better ya back to the future part-IV and V oh ya they are calling it area -51 lol they always have a sense of hummor don't they.