Done with GCJ: jPhoto (.sourceforge.net)

[David Brownell <david-b at pacbell dot net>]

I thought y'all might be interested.  Using GCJ 2.96 as found
in Redhat 7, I've put together an RPM relying on the libgcj
JVM and which seems to run nicely.  I think future releases
of jPhoto will continue to offer such an RPM version, and would
be interested to know of non-x86 versions work for folk too.

http://jphoto.sourceforge.net/ gives most of the relevant info.
Basically, there's a flexible API to USB on top of Linux, which
is written in Java, and jPhoto provides basic support for one
digital camera protocol on top of that.  The protocol is rather
significant because it's the new USB standard for talking to
such devices (PTP).  But not many cameras support it yet; right
now, think "Kodak DC-4800", a 3+ MPixel camera (positive review
in the Nov 7 PC Mag).  Unless you don't mind putting prototype
firmware on a DC-240 camera you happen to have handy.

This works with the generic USB-enabled kernel shipped with RH7,
and also most Linux 2.4.0-test kernels (like test10).

Now I'm really starting to look forward to GCC 3.0 with Java
support -- assuming those "libgcj into gcc tree" and "V3 ABI"
issues get worked !

- Dave