[PLUG-TALK] Java confusion

[John Jason Jordan]

For many years I have had a Java application called TreeForm for drawing
phrase structure trees. I have the current version installed on my
Lenovo laptop, where it works perfectly. Now I am trying to get it
working on my new Latitude, but it produces an error when I try to run
it:

	java -Xmx256m -Xms64m -jar TreeForm.jar
	Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError:
		sun.misc.Launcher at user.Interface.Start.<clinit>
		(Start.java:54

From past experience this program is really touchy about what flavor of
Java you try to feed it. I searched Synaptic on the Lenovo for 'java'
and installed everything installed there onto the Latitude, but still
get the error. However, I didn't install two packages:

	oracle-java8-installer	Oracle Java8(TM) Development Kit
	oracle-java8-set-default	Set Oracle Java8 as default Java

I remember having e-mail discussions (Donald Derrick, now PhD, UBC) who
is the fellow who wrote it while working on his dissertation on syntax,
and he strongly suggested Sun Java 8 (now Oracle) which is no doubt why
I installed the above two packages. However, I installed them a long
time ago and I don't know where I got them. They're not in the repos for
Xubuntu 21.10, and I can't find any references to them as .deb or PPA
anywhere on Oracle's website.  However, I did find and download from
Oracle jdk-8u321-linux-x64.tar, which can be used to install Oracle
Java 8 on 64-bit Linux. I extracted the contents of the file, but it
doesn't seem to have occurred to Oracle to include instructions for how
to install it.

I found a lot of references on askUbuntu regarding a PPA, but the
comments indicate that it was eliminated on 4/17/2019.

I could use some suggestions. :)