downCast runs on any machine that provides a Java Virtual Machine supporting J2SE version 1.3 or higher. For its user interface, downCast relies on and requires Swing 1.1 or higher.
Memory requirements (RAM) depend heavily on document size and document structure. Typically, 8 to 12 times the XML document raw size is needed in memory for succesful conversion. If the document has many style changes and/or embedded images, more memory will be required.
When embedding downCast into your own projects, make sure to specify a big enough maximum heap (256 at least, 512 MB recommended) for the Java VM running your application in order to avoid Out of memory errors.
We recommend the use of Sun's J2SE version 1.3.x that is available from Sun's Java home page at http://java.sun.com/products/. It includes by default a Swing implementation suitable for downCast.
For the time being, we cannot recommend using J2SE version 1.4.x releases for use with downCast due to a very unfortunate packaging of outdated XML tools containing several bugs in the JRE core runtime library rt.jar, which take precedence over the newer, bugfixed releases of these tools downCast comes standard with.
You need at least 10 MB of free space on your hard disk to install downCast.
We recommend the use of Sun's J2SE version 1.3.x. For details have a look at the windows 95/98/2000/NT/XP section earlier.
Up to and including J2SE version 1.3.x, downCast requires a GDI or X11 server running. This is true even when you include the library into a faceless server application. You may consider to have a virtual X11 server running.
Starting with J2SE 1.4, you may run downCast without having to run an X11 server. To start any application using downCast as a library and interfacing with it via the documented API, start the specific application in so-called headless mode by adding the -Djava.awt.headless=true parameter to the java startup commandline parameters.