NetBeans Weekly News #81

NetBeans Weekly News, a newsletter for the NetBeans community
Issue #81 - September 2, 2002
URL: <http://www.netbeans.org/newsletter/2002-09-02.html>

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* FLASH! NetBeans 3.4 released on August 27th *
The new version brings many UI enhancements: debugger user interface was 
completely redesigned, you can see errors you have made marked in the 
Editor window and much more... read Tim's announcement message
 
<http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=370379&listName=nbannounce>

A virtual release party will be held on IRC. Tim Boudreau has proposed a 
time (hopefully suitable for most of us) although there is still a 
slight confusion about effect of daylight saving time in different 
timezones :-)
 
<http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=372464&listName=nbdiscuss>

* Announcements

Radim Kubacki announced Beta releases of additional modules for web
application development. Their functionality was originally a part of 
Forte for Java and include JSP debugging or HTTP monitor.
    <http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=371437&listName=nbusers>

* General discussions

NetBeans Governance Board elections are comming. Quite a few interesting
thoughts about how the Board should(not) look like or whether its role 
is sufficiently clear were seen during the past week. Tim asks for more 
members of the Board from the community:
 
<http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=372001&listName=nbdiscuss>
William Will notes that community may get more involved in driving the
project:
 
<http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=371370&listName=nbdiscuss>

Peter Zavadsky has reopened a discussion what JDKs should NetBeans 
compile and run on. We all want the IDE to use the most fresh technology 
available, but how to combine that with availability for broad range of 
platforms or support for older JDK releases ?
 
<http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=371370&listName=nbdiscuss>

* User's digest

Installers had to be updated, they incidentally deleted old NetBeans 
userdir during NetBeans 3.4 installation. Everything is OK and solved
from 29th August, you may read through the messages from that time:
    <http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=371654&listName=nbusers>

Webpolls on NetBeans release codenames closed. Maxym has published 
results on Thursday (but the message is not in archives ?) and we should 
have NetBeans 3.4 codenamed "Yogyakarta"! Fortunately, copy of the 
results can be found in a reply:
    <http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=371437&listName=nbusers>
Mahesh Joshi has pointed us to what Yogyakarta means:
    <http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=371654&listName=nbusers>

People are eager to use advanced code formatters. Jalopy was suggested 
as one of the most powerfull tools to (re)format your code, but sadly it 
cannot be used as indentation engine active when typing new code. Read 
discussion that followed:
    <http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=371654&listName=nbusers>

Rex Hsu has run into an ancient bug fixed in the newest NetBeans 
release. If your application suddenly starts complaining about classes 
not being found, you may be in just that position too:
    <http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=371437&listName=nbusers>

* Developer's weekly dosage

Synchronization issues are in spotlight again. You may be interested in
JSR #166 (Concurrency Utilities) or the related discussion Yarda has 
started in
    <http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=370265&listName=nbdev>

Ugly separate download of "extra binaries" solved ? Jesse started
implementation of (de)scrambler so that binaries can be updated through 
CVS together with the ordinary source files.
    <http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=370083&listName=nbdev>

Ongoing discussion about performance issues in NetBeans evolved into
discussion about garbage collection techniques and why it is difficult 
to apply whatever scheme to NetBeans. Read (some of the) thread:
    <http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=370186&listName=nbdev>
and what you can get if you unreasonably fiddle with your VM memory 
settings:
    <http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=370791&listName=nbdev>

Tom Ball has posted a link to an interesting Q&A about Swing 
performance. Discussion on threading models used in NetBeans and what 
other solutions can be read in thread starting from:
    <http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=371304&listName=nbdev>

* Voices from the outer space: new projects in NetBeans 4.0

Dirk Ruiz has prepared UI specification of configurations in new 
projects. Read his proposal
 
<http://projects.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=371783&listName=dev>
and if you find projects related topics interesting, what about 
joinining [email protected] mailing list.

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