[Biojava-l] JDK 1.4 in beta release

[Humphrey Sheil]

Hi

Just thought I'd give you all a heads up about the 1.4 JDK.  It's finally
hit the streets in beta release at:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/?frontpage-hottopics

Available on solaris, linux and windows.

It's got some great new features particularly from a biojava point of view:

1.  Regular expressions finally in the core classes:  java.util.regex

2.  Creating server-side images without java.awt classes needing access to a
windowing environment (e.g. using the FeatureRenderers in a non-dynamic
medium, e.g. servlets / JSP).

3.  non-blocking io (in the java.nio package). Parts of this package are
also used in the JNI world to speed up cost of going outside the JVM to say
perl or other systems, a task that happens a lot in bioinformatics.

4.  logging api - pretty much log4j built into the core JDK.  It's used by
the JDK itself to log information about what it itself is doing.  Now
there's no excuse not to log reams of debugging information!

5.  Performance.  Revised garbage collection, reflection etc. and all
supposed to be faster and smoother.

plus a lot more.

Regards

Humphrey