Known Java Issues and Options

Omniscope includes and runs a private version of Java

Java is freely downloadable, open-source software that provides a 'virtual machine' or VM that permits software like Omniscope to run on many different machines and operating systems. For more information on Java, see Wikipedia.  Visokio applications are pure Java applications that run 'on top' of a 'bundled' Java virtual machine which runs 'on top' of your machine's operating system. The Omniscope installer includes its own 'private' version of Java, not accessible to any other application for maximum security. Java is open-source software that is being continuously improved. Periodically, there is a new release of Java, and known issues in Java emerge which are relevant to installation and performance of Visokio applications.

You only need to worry about the shared, general-purpose version of Java installed on your or recipients' machines when you use the Web Start deployment option for your IOK files. But if you choose to deploy files using Omniscope Online (Web Start) instead of the fully-installed free Viewer, all the machine you plan to distribute to will need to have Java 5 or later.

Known Java Installation issues - Web Start deloyment option

In this section, we summarise known Java installation issues and implications of up-grading to the latest versions of Java. Other known issues with Java that do not affect installation, but can cause a hang with no Omniscope error messages are listed here.

Java permissions and security issues

Java has security settings which may affect the treatment of images. If user settings restrict access to certain packages in particular the sun.awt.image package within Java then certain views can be affected. The following issue has been seen before:

java.security.AccessControlException {class java.security.AccessControlException "access denied (java.lang.RuntimePermission accessClassInPackage.sun.awt.image)"
at java.security.AccessControlContext.checkPermission(Unknown Source)
at java.security.AccessController.checkPermission(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.SecurityManager.checkPermission(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.SecurityManager.checkPackageAccess(Unknown Source)
at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(Unknown Source)

It is likely that your security policy is not letting you access to classes in java.awt.image packages.
Access to classes in AWT package, viz., and the java.awt.image packages are required.

In order to fix this problem you need to grant Omniscope users permission by adding the following statement

grant {
permission java.lang.RuntimePermission
"accessClassInPackage.sun.awt.image";
}

to any of the security policy files referred to by statements such as

policy.url.1=file:${java.home}/lib/security/java.policy
policy.url.2=file:${user.home}/.java.policy

in the Java security configuration file for your installation. This file should
be located at ${java.home}/lib/security/java.security.

${java.home} refers to where java is installed i.e. "C:\j2sdk1.4.2_14".
${user.home} refers to user home directory which on Windows is "C:\Documents and Settings\<user>" where
<user> refers to the user name. For example use named David, user.home would be "C:\Documents and Settings\David"

Known Java issues on Vista

The Windows Vista operating system is not fully supported in Java versions 1.4, Java 1.5 releases prior to build Java 1.5.0_11 (Java 1.5.0_11 or later supports Vista), or Java 6 original release or 1.6.0_01 (Java 1.6.0_02 or later supports Vista). If you are running a Java version not fully supported on Vista please update to the latest release of Java at http://www.java.com or use the PVM version bundled with our applications (Java 1.5.0_11).

International fonts

Some fonts can crash earlier versions of Java and this has been fixed in latest releases of Java. Visokio applications have been modified to minimise the impact of this rare problem in the event you are running older versions of Java.

Java Daylight Savings Time (DST) Compliance

Omniscope is a Java application, so their compliance with DST (as recently updated) depends on the Java VM used.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/timezones-137583.html provides details on Java version DST status.