We're pleased to announce that we've selected Phil Crow as the recipient of the
second Perl 6 microgrant. Phil is the hacker behind the Java::Swing module
which allows Perl programmers to put a Java Swing GUI on their application
without writing any Java and he'll be using this knowledge to convert Java
declarations to Perl 6. You can find details of the project he's
planning in the
text of his grant application:

Tim Bunce has suggested that it would be nice to have a general purpose
declaration translator from Java to Perl. In particular, he is interested
in leveraging this tool to create a JDBC API for Perl 6 from the
Java JDBC classes and interfaces. The result would then provide a strong
foundation for the Perl 6 DBI.

I propose to write that translator. It would have two pieces:

* One would use the Java deparser (part of its standard development
kit) to turn Java classes or interfaces into an internal structure

* The other half would turn that structure into valid Perl 6. Note that it would
only translate class, interface, and method declarations, not code.