Other Enhancements to Platform Libraries and Tools.

J2SE 1.3.0 contains select new functionality that Sun has added to the platform and Java 2 SDK tools suite in consultation with business partners and in response to input from developers. A sampling of the enhancements include:

• New javac Compiler

  The javac compiler has been re-implemented from scratch in J2SE 1.3 making it faster for many applications than the compilers in previous versions of the Java 2 SDK.

• Dynamic Proxy Classes

  J2SE 1.3 contains a new API for dynamic proxy classes. A dynamic proxy class is a class that implements a list of interfaces specified at runtime such that a method invocation through one of the interfaces on an instance of the class is encoded and dispatched to another object through a uniform interface. Thus, you can use a dynamic proxy class can be used to create a type-safe proxy object for a list of interfaces without requiring pre-generation of the proxy class, such as with compile-time tools. Dynamic proxy classes are useful to developers who need to provide the type-safe reflective dispatch of invocations to objects that present interface APIs.

  For example, you can use a dynamic proxy class to create an object that implements multiple arbitrary event listener interfaces to process a variety of events of different types in a uniform fashion, such as by logging all such events to a file.

• Expanded API for Collections

  The J2SE 1.3 version of the popular Collections API has been made even easier for you to use. The 1.3 Collections API includes new convenience methods and copy constructors for Lists and Maps.

• Expanded Java Foundation Classes/Swing Functionality

  A large part of the J2SE 1.3.0 engineering effort has been directed into tuning and enhancing the Swing components of the Java Foundation Classes API. In addition to performance tuning of the Swing libraries, new JFC/Swing functionality has been added to the Swing libraries in several areas. One example is the new support for variable-height rows in lightweight table components.

• Improved Math and Utility Libraries

  J2SE 1.3.0 includes two math-related classes that have the same API: Math and StrictMath. StrictMath is defined to return bit-for-bit reproducible results for numeric operations in all implementations for developers who need that guarantee. Implementations of class Math, on the other hand, can vary within specified constraints to enable flexibility for better performance. Developers who want best performance but don't require bit-for-bit reproducible results on different platforms will want to use Math rather than StrictMath for their numeric code.

  The J2SE API for arbitrary precision math, classes BigInteger and BigDecimal, enables arithmetic operations that never overflow or lose precision, features necessary for many types of computations such as financial calculations. Class BigInteger has been reimplemented in pure Java programming-language code. Previously, the implementation of the BigInteger class was based on an underlying C library. The new implementation performs many standard operations faster than the old implementation. The new API also includes new convenience features that make it easier for you to use.

  A new Timer API has been added to the Java 2 Platform to support animations, human interaction timeouts, on-screen clocks and calendars, work-scheduling routines, reminder facilities, and more.

  An API for virtual machine shutdown hooks has been added to class java.lang.Runtime that provides a simple, portable interface to the underlying operating system's process-shutdown notification so that an application written in the Java programming language can initiate shutdown actions such as closing down network connections, saving session state, and deleting temporary files.

  New delete-on-close mode for opening Zip and Jar files has been added so that long-running server applications can delete no-longer-needed JarFile objects and data to keep disk space free.