[Announce] Apache POI 3.1 BETA1 Released

Hi All,

The POI team is pleased to announce the release of 3.1 BETA1 which is one of the final steps before 3.1 FINAL.

Apache POI is well-known in the Java field as a library for reading and
writing OLE2 office file formats, such as Excel, PowerPoint, Visio and
Word.

The status of this release is a beta, meaning that we encourage users to try it out.
If you find any bugs, please report them to the POI bug database or to
the poi-dev mailing list.

The release contains a mixture of new features and bug fixes, compared
to 3.0.2. The most important changes are:
 - Major improvements in Excel formula evaluation
 - Support for conditional formatting in Excel
 - Handling of embedded OLE2 documents in Excel and PowerPoint
 - Major improvements in the API for PowerPoint (support for Tables,
 better handling of text properties, PPT Graphics2D driver)
 - Export PowerPoint slides into image

A full list of changes is available in the change log:
http://poi.apache.org/changes.html

The source and binaries can be downloaded from your local mirror: 
http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/poi/dev/

The release is also available from the central Maven repository under
Group ID "org.apache.poi" and Version "3.1-beta1".

For the Apache POI Team
Yegor Kozlov