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What's new in Tcl/Java?
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<H3>
What's new in Tcl/Java?
</H3>

<HR>

<ul>
<li>
<A HREF="#14">Version 1.4:</A>
</li>
<li>
<A HREF="#13">Version 1.3:</A>
</li>
<li>
<A HREF="#12">Version 1.2:</A>
</li>
<li>
<A HREF="#11">Version 1.1:</A>
</li>
</ul>

<HR>

<DL>

<DT>
<H3>
<A NAME="14">
Version 1.4:
</A>
</H3>
</DT>

<DD>

<P>
Tcl/Java 1.4 includes a number of exciting new features that
make integrating Tcl and Java even easier.
</P>

<H4>TJC Compiler</H4>

<p>
The TJC compiler is by far the most significant new development
in the Jacl 1.4 release. The TJC compiler is used to convert
a Tcl proc to Java bytecode that is then executed directly
inside the JVM. In most cases, a TJC compiled proc will
execute 10 to 20 times faster than an interpreted proc.
Jacl's implementation has also been significantly optimized to
support efficient execution of TJC compiled procs. In
some cases, TJC compiled procs actually execute more quickly
than procs compiled with the built-in compiler included in native
Tcl. The TJC compiler can be used either at runtime or in batch mode.
</p>

<H4>Itcl Extension</H4>

<p>
Jacl 1.4 now includes support for the Itcl OO extension. A Jacl
user would execute the following to load Itcl commands into Jacl:
<blockquote>
<code>package require Itcl</code>
</blockquote>
This extension was implemented for Jacl by porting the Itcl 3.3
C source code to Java.
</p>


<H4>Parser Extension</H4>

<p>
Jacl 1.4 now includes support for the TclPro's Tcl parser extension.
A Jacl user would execute the following to load Parser commands into Jacl:
<blockquote>
<code>package require parser</code>
</blockquote>
The parser extension version 1.4 was implemented for Jacl by porting
the C source code to Java.
</p>

<H4>expr command</H4>

<p>
Jacl's expr implementation now supports the 'eq' and 'ne'
string equality operators.
</p>

<H4>java::for command</H4>

<p>
The java package includes a new <code>java::for</code> command.
This command provides a mapping to Java's enhanced for
loop statement and provides a simplified way to loop over
the elements of a Collection or array object. See the
documentation for usage examples.
</p>

<H4>Inner Classes</H4>

<p>
Inner classes are now fully supported in the Java package.
In earlier versions of Tcl/Java, an inner class like
<code>java.util.Map.Entry</code> would be indicated by a
string like <code>java.util.Map\$Entry</code>.
This usage worked in some cases, but it was ugly and
did not support imported class names via <code>java::import</code>.
The new implementation makes it possible to pass
<code>java.util.Map.Entry</code> or import <code>java.util.Map</code>
and then pass <code>Map.Entry</code> to any of the <code>java::*</code>
commands.
</p>

<H4>Classloader Implementation</H4>

<p>
The TclClassLoader used in Jacl and Tcl Blend to load Java
classes and resources has been updated to make use of the
class loader delagation model introduced in JDK 1.2. Loading
of classes and resources is now be delagated to the thread
context class loader. This change fixes class and resource
loading problems found in Java app server environments like
WebSphere, Tomcat, and others. A number of bugs related to
loading classes from the <code>env(TCL_CLASSPATH)</code>
path have been fixed and support for loading resources from
the <code>env(TCL_CLASSPATH)</code> path has been added.
</p>

<H4>SetInterrupt API for Jacl</H4>

<p>
A new <code>Interp.setInterrupt()</code> API makes it possible for
the user to interrupt a running Jacl interpreter and unwind
the stack. For example, this API could be used to implement
a service thread that would timeout and cleanup after a
certain amount of time. See
<A HREF="SetInterrupted.html">SetInterrupted</A> for more info.
</p>

<H4>JPDA debug support</H4>

<p>
Jacl can now be started in a debug mode that makes
it easy to attach a Java debugger. A Java debugger that
supports JPDA will automatically load and display the source
code that implement Jacl. To start Jacl in debug mode,
simply set the <code>JACL_DEBUG</code> env variable to "1" before running
<code>jaclsh</code> or <code>jaclsh.bat</code>.
Info about how to attach to the shell will be printed to the console.
</p>

</DD>

</DL>







<DL>

<DT>
<H3>
<A NAME="13">
Version 1.3:
</A>
</H3>
</DT>

<DD>

<P>
This section covers features introduced in Tcl/Java 1.3.
</P>

<H4>regexp command</H4>

<p>
A new implementation of Jacl's regexp and regsub commands has been
donated by Colin Stevens of Sun Labs fame. This replaces the
Oro regexp implementation. It was binary only and could no longer
be supported. Jacl is now 100% Open Source.
</p>

<H4>binary command</H4>

<p>
An implementation of Tcl's binary command has been added to Jacl.
This new command passes all of the Tcl regression tests for the
binary command. Thanks go to Christian Krone for this command.
</p>

<H4>history command</H4>

<p>
An implementation of Tcl's history command has been added to Jacl.
This new command passes all of the Tcl regression tests for the
history command. Thanks go to Christian Krone for this command.
</p>

<H4>interp command</H4>

<p>
An implementation of Tcl's interp command has been added to Jacl.
This new command passes all of the Tcl regression tests for the
interp command. Thanks go to Christian Krone for this command.
</p>

<H4>fconfigure command</H4>

<p>
The fconfigure command has been added to Jacl. Thanks go to
Bruce Johnson for providing the initial implementation
of this command.
</p>

<H4>encoding command</H4>

<p>
The encoding command has been added to Jacl. Thanks go to
Bruce Johnson for providing the initial implementation
of this command.
</p>

<H4>socket command</H4>

<p>
The socket command has been added to Jacl. Both client sockets
and server sockets are supported. Thanks go to Neil Madden
for providing the the initial implementation of this command.
</p>

<H4>file volumes command</H4>

<p>
The file volumes subcommand has been added to Jacl. The
implementation makes use of the File.listRoots() method
introduced in JDK 1.2, so a newer JDK is required to
make use of this functionality. Thanks go to Shawn Boyce
for providing the initial implementation of this command.
</p>

<H4>array unset command</H4>

<p>
The array unset subcommand has been added to the Jacl's array command.
</p>

<H4>exec command</H4>

<p>
Jacl can now exec a process in the background by passing
the & flag on the exec command line. Exec will also use
a second thread to read IO if running under JDK 1.3 or newer.
The exec command has been fixed so that will not deadlock
under Win XP.
</p>

<H4>info hostname command</H4>

<p>
The info hostname command is now implemented in Jacl.
Tahnks go to Alexander Pasadyn for providing the
implementation of this command.
</p>


<H4>New IO subsystem for Jacl</H4>

<p>
The Tcl IO subsystem has been ported to Jacl. Encoding, buffering,
and line translations for channels now match Tcl semantics.
Non-blocking IO and the fileevent command are not implemented.
</p>

<H4>Ref Counting in Tcl Blend</H4>

<p>
A new reference counting system has been implemented for
Tcl Blend. A newly created CObject or TclList no longer
increments the ref count the native Tcl_Obj. Instead,
the ref count for a Tcl_Obj is incremented when
TclObject.preserve() is invoked and decremented
when TclObject.release() is invoked. If a TclList
created inside a Java method is never released,
it will be cleaned up when the Java method returns.
This new ref counting system does not depend on the
Java garbage collector and should not suffer from
the memory leaks or shutdown issues that plagued
the previous implementation.
</p>

<H4>Tcl/Java API</H4>

<p>
The <code>TclObject.takeExclusive()</code> method has a number
of problems, and has been deprecated in favor of the new
<code>TclObject.duplicate()</code> method.
This new duplicate method works identically to <code>Tcl_DuplicateObj</code>.
Old code that makes used of the <code>takeExclusive()</code> method will still
work, but it should be updated to use duplicate as time permits.
See the TclObject manual entry for an example of how to use this
new duplicate method.
</p>

<H4>Tcl Blend Threading</H4>

<p>
Earlier versions of Tcl Blend made use of a global lock that
serialized each Java method call. In the new version,
Tcl Blend's JNI code has been rewritten to get rid of this
global lock. This change significantly simplifies the code
and should increase performance when Java methods are invoked
from multiple threads.
</p>

<H4>Reflected Method/Constructor/Field Access</H4>

<p>
A new approach to reflected method, constructor, and field
access has been implemented. In the previous implementation,
package scoped entities were considered when accessing a field,
when attempting to resolve a method signature, or when choosing
a constructor. In the new implementation, these package scoped
entities are only considered when a custom package invoker
is defined for the package.
</p>

<H4>Reflected Object Access</H4>

<p>
A new approach to reflected object access has been implemented.
In the previous implementation, inaccessible objects could
be reflected in the interpreter. This type of access would
be illegal in Java code, so new Class accessibility checks
have been added to each of the java methods. An exception
will now be raised on any attempt to interact with an
inaccessible class.
</p>

<H4>Passing TclObjects to Java</H4>

<p>
It is now possible to pass a TclObject directly to a Java method.
In previous versions it was possible to pass a TclObject contained
in a ReflectObject, but it was not possible to pass the actual
TclObject that contained the ReflectObject. The new implementation
makes it possible to directly pass the containing TclObject assuming
it is not a ReflectObject that contains a TclObject.
</p>

<H4>JVM Support</H4>

<p>
A completely new build system has been added. It now supports
the IBM Java-2 1.3 JVM. The new build system also adds
support for the Kaffe Open JVM with Tcl Blend. Jacl has worked
with Kaffe for some time, but now both Tcl Blend and Jacl can
be used with Kaffe. In addition, both Jacl and Tcl Blend
can be compiled with JDK 1.5. Earlier versions made use of
variables named enum which is now a reserved word in JDK 1.5.
Both Jacl and Tcl Blend can be built under Windows using the
mingw+msys package, user no longer need to have VC++ installed
to build.
</p>

<H4>JVM Options</H4>

<p>
The <code>tclblend_init</code> variable has provided a means to
pass a single JVM option to a JDK 1.2 or newer JVM. This support
has been improved so that multiple JVM options can now be passed.
</p>

</DD>
</DL>











<DL>

<DT>
<H3>
<A NAME="12">
Version 1.2:
</A>
</H3>
</DT>

<DD>

<P>
This section covers features introduced in Tcl/Java 1.2.
</P>

<H4>java::try command</H4>

<p>
A new <code>java::try</code> command has been added to the java package.
This command provides a Tcl binding to Java's try-catch-finally
construct. The command is able to manage multiple error
conditions unlike Tcl's <code>catch</code> command.
The new command can also be used to catch Tcl errors and
Java exceptions independently. See the docs on the
<code>java::try</code> command for more information.
</p>

<H4>java::import command</H4>

<p>
A new <code>java::import</code> command has been added. This
command works like the import statement in the Java language,
it provides a means to specify Java class names in a shortened format.
For example, one could import the class <code>java.util.Hashtable</code>
and then use the simple class name <code>Hashtable</code> instead of
the fully qualified name <code>java.util.Hashtable</code>.
</p>


<H4>java::autolock command</H4>

<p>
The new java::autolock command can be used in interactive
sessions to keep java object references from being garbage
collected. This can be really handy when you want to quickly
test out a java class without the hassle of garbage collection.
</p>

<H4>clock command</H4>

<p>
An implementation of Tcl's clock command has been added to Jacl.
Jacl's new clock command uses Java's time and date APIs to provide
the clock functionality that Tcl users enjoy. This implementation
is fully compatible with the clock command from Tcl 8.0.
</p>


<H4>Namespace Support for Jacl</H4>

<p>
The namespace features from the Tcl 8.1 core have been ported
over to Jacl. This adds the "namespace" command and the "variable"
command. Support is still at an early stage and more feedback
is needed but this is still an exciting development for Jacl.
</p>

<H4>Typed Null Reflection</H4>

<p>
In Tcl/Java 1.1, a single reflect object was used to represent
the null Java object. In Java code, the special null object reference
can have no type or it can be referenced as any type. We therefore needed
to fix Tcl's reflection system so that it acted more like Java. To do
this, the implementation was changed to support a type for a reflected
null object. A reflected null object's type can be queried at runtime
with the java::info command and it can be changed with the java::cast
command. To get a reference to an untyped null object in the reflection
system one would use the java::null command.
</p>

<H4>Signature Matching</H4>

<p>
The signature matching system introduced in Tcl/Java 1.1 did not
work correctly when the null Java object was given as an argument to
a method or constructor. This has been fixed in 1.2 and the matching
system has been updated to take a null objects reflection type into
account when disambiguating an overloaded method signature. In addition,
the signature matching system will now provide a more descriptive error
message in the case of an ambiguous signature.
</p>

<H4>Unicode Support</H4>

<p>
Unicode support has been added to the Jacl parser. Users should now
be able to pass and unicode string form Java to Jacl and vice versa.
Tcl Blend will also support Unicode strings (encoded as UTF-8) when
compiled with Tcl 8.1 or better.
</p>

<H4>New Demo</H4>

<p>
Tcl/Java 1.2 includes a new pack demo which shows how a Java AWT
layout manager and the Tcl/Java reflection system can be used to
provide a Tk like pack command for Java widgets. This command can
be used just like the pack command in Tk. The demo also includes
an example of how the layout manager can be used in stand alone
Java code.
</p>

<H4>JVM/OS Support</H4>

<p>
Tcl/Java 1.2 adds support for Tcl Blend on Linux and IRIX systems.
Tcl/Java on Linux works with both the JDK 1.1 and JDK 1.2 ports.
Earlier versions of Tcl Blend did not works on these systems.
Support for the Kaffe JVM was also added. Support for Tcl 8.1 and
8.2 has also been added.
</p>

</DD>
</DL>







<DL>

<DT>
<H3>
<A NAME="11">
Version 1.1:
</A>
</H3>
</DT>

<DD>

<P>
This section covers features introduced in Tcl/Java 1.1.
</P>

<H4>java::cast command</H4>

<p>
A new <code>java::cast</code> command has been added. This command can be used
to change the reflected type of Java objects inside an interp.
See the documentation for more info and examples on how this new command works.
</p>

<H4>file nativename command</H4>

<p>
The nativename subcommand was added to the file command in
Jacl. On Windows, "file nativename C:/dir" now returns "C:\dir".
</p>

<H4>Signature Matching</H4>

<p>
Java method invocations now use an argument matching system to
automatically determine which Java method a user intended
to invoke based on the types of the arguments to method. In version
1.0 only the number of arguments to the method were used to disambiguate
overloaded method invocations.
</p>

<H4>Typed Reflection</H4>

<p>
Tcl/Java now represents all reflected Java objects (A reflected Java
object is one that has been added to the interp and has a Tcl command
associated with it) as a pairing of instance and Class objects.
A single Java object can be referenced as more then one Java Class
type. For example, a <code>String</code> object can be referenced as type
<code>String</code> or as type <code>Object</code>. Java array objects
have also been updated to support typed object reflection.
</p>

<H4>Execution Time Improvements</H4>

<p>
Jacl is much faster. The Tcl parser has been completely rewritten,
it uses less memory and executes more quickly.
</p>

<H4>Regexp Package</H4>

<p>
In Jacl 1.0, the regexp command could only be used in the binary
release of Jacl. We have extracted the needed class files and placed
the in the source release of Jacl 1.1. The source to the regular
expression code is still not provided, just the binary .class files.
</p>

<H4>exec command</H4>

<p>
Jacl's exec command for unix and windows has been improved.
In Jacl 1.0, the exec command did not treat some strings
correctly during an exec which could cause some very strange errors.
Commands with a '$' of ' ' char did not work as expected.
</p>


</DD>
</DL>



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