Re: Java applet security, exportability, Jon Postel haiku

[Martin Minow <minow@pobox.com>]

A few Java comments on David Conrad's <drc@adni.net> questions:

>
>As they go through the data entry process I collect bits of entropy from
>mouse and keyboard events in a java.security.SecureRandom object.

Java 1.1 lets you attach event handlers to every user-interaction
class. For example, you can watch mouse movement, mouse entry
and exit into your components, and character entry in all text fields.
You might try adding handlers and capturing mouse position and
the system clock. Each event, by itself, won't give you much
entropy (and, of course, they are highly correlated event-to-event),
but you should be able to get a bit or two from each event.

>
>... I was flabbergasted when I found out that jdk
>1.0 had no printing API and so our applet, if it should allow users to
>print, must be a 1.1 applet, and very few browsers have 1.1 support

Java 1.1 is real, and support is becoming available on all platforms.
The lack of a printing API in Java 1.0 was probably a good thing:
printing is hard to get right, especially in a cross-platform environment,
and waiting for a more mature AWT will avoid compatibility issues.
Since your customers use a browser, why not display the data and
have the browser handle the printing?

Martin Minow
minow@pobox.com