ZPEX has long held the banner for performance and, more recently, has outperformed PHP and Python in the latest performance tests. However, its compatibility layer with ZPE plugins has always plagued it, meaning it wasn't a full package like standard ZPE.
Well, thanks to some clever ideas and some assistance from AI, I have developed a bridge that lets these plugins be used, but in a slightly different way. Here's how this works:
- Each JAR contains its own plugin
- Each JAR is also compiled as a native plugin (dll, dylib, so) that can be used with ZPEX.
This way they do exactly the same thing, but work with different systems. In addition, import still works the same way; no changes are needed for either.
In addition, ZPEX now has a UI builder. Yup, you read correctly. A UI builder for ZPE and ZPEX. And it's clever. It works using an underlying C library I've written/am writing, which uses JNI to provide native bindings to AppKit, Win32, and GTK. UIs will, for the first time, look different across operating systems, rendering engines, and layout engines, but this is to be expected and is actually fine by me. Components are fully native this way. too. Here's an example of a program made on macOS using the new UI object.
