Grendel 19990514

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You may recall that in 1997, Netscape embarked on a project to rewrite Navigator/Communicator in Java. This project (code named "Xena," but sometimes referred to by the press as "Javagator") was cancelled before completion.

Grendel is the mail-news portion of the Xena project written in Java. Its goal is to be a true cross-platform application with a feature set that satisfies the poweruser.

Grendel was originally developed as a part of the "Javagator" project at Netscape. This project was cancelled before completion after 3 years of development. After the source for Grendel was released other people started to work toward completing it for about another 2 years. The original release was therefore incomplete.

The build system is currently being redone to use Apache Ant instead of Makefiles. The easiest way to compile Grendel in its current state is to grab a copy of JCreator and create a Grendel project in the directory and compile it. A lot of test files are currently being separated out into different directories so if a certain file isnt compiling nicely, its probably because its a broken test file that can be deleted from your tree safely.

Were also in the process of moving Grendel from its own XML format to a Mozilla-friendly XUL format using the MozCreator Java XUL Parser API. Wed also like to contain all resources into one easy to manage resource folder instead of dumping them all over the source tree.

Why have Grendel when we have Thunderbird?

A primary goal with Grendel is restoring the libraries contained in the email client to full state as well as providing a working email program. Having a Java port of many of the Mozilla libraries from C++ to Java would be very valuable to many projects. The code has a lot of potential and having the Mozilla platform available for Java programmers can be a invaluable resource for Java programmers wishing to utilize email features easily. Its Java design eliminates some of the problems of a C++ design like Thunderbird. For example, Java has garbage collection and no restriction of language features in order to maintain cross-platform compatibility (like with C++ and lack of feature usage like templates for compatibility).