Thumbs up for the effort, we need more Java based frontends.
I'm currently working on a car system myself but it more like the whole package than a frontend (unless you consider Xorg a backend ^^). I started with a complete modular design but dropped that for 2 reasons:
1. I want to tightly integrate all components: if the navigation speaks, turn down the music - if a call comes in, pause the music etc.
2. Design speed: the original design to do everything modular became too damn complicated without even coding a single line. By the time I have a finished piece of software I probably have ideas to refactor everything into a more generic framework.
I am looking for 3 things in my car pc: music, navigation and phone control. All the other fancy features I see around are possibly awesome for version 2.0 (if I ever get there) but to replace my current head unit + car kit + TomTom, those are the three items I need the most.
Enough about my little project. I'm very anxious to see how you get stuff solved as I'm running into much of the same problems. One tip to get awesome multi-media support: use the XineLib Java bindings. The downside is that you will require linux to run on unless you tie it together with cygwin or something...
And a final kick to the people who hate Java: I'm using openGL accelerated animations, using Mesa (software rendering as I broke native openGL atm - aka slow *** 3D) I use ~40% CPU on a 2.6GHz Pentium 4 rendering between 350 and 500 fps. Yes I know thats insane so usually I cap it off to 25 fps which then draws (including Xine playback) 3% - 5% CPU. I would say thats pretty respectable (for 800x600 rendering 25 components with animation and alpha layers).
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