Wrapper minervax is used to extend MINERVA with external classes and their methods.

External classes can be used by MINERVA just like built-in predicates.

External classes can be from some vendor's Java system, e.g. for networking, imaging, multimedia etc, third party class libraries, or written by yourself.

External classes can be added to MINERVA statically at boot time or dynamically ("on demand") when first used during run time.

A java compiler is required to use minervax.

minervax is invoked as

minervax [-gui] [-c InterfaceClass] [-f MinervaFrame] [-p PackageName] DescriptionName

Parameters are:

• -gui
  Indicates that the extension should include gui support i.e. the new MinervaFrame will replace com.ifcomputer.minerva.Gui

• -c InterfaceClass
  Name of the interface class. Defaults to DescriptionName

• -f MinervaFrame
  Name of the new top level class to be invoked by the script 'minerva' Used if the extensions are added statically. This class is then used to replace com.ifcomputer.minerva.Application or com.ifcomputer.minerva.Gui which are called by minerva resp. minervagui.

• -p PackageName
  Name for a Java package that shall contains the new predicates.

• DescriptionName
  The file DescriptionName.mxt holds the interface specification that maps methods to MINERVA predicates. Defaults to 'MinervaExtension'.

The file names must not include the extension. Minervax will append the extension

• .mpk to the package declaration file
• .java to the frame and interface files
• .mxt to the interface description file

Please refer to the Example Programs for usage example. Note that the reflection package provides an alternative way to extend MINERVA with existing Java-based software components.

Up read on...