I've returned safely from Amsterdam. I'll be playing catch-up over the next few days. Updates will remain slow for a while though while I catch up with various work that was sidelined while I was away, including reviewing the latest SAX pre-release, packaging up the SAX conformance test suite for release, and finishing the next editions of a couple of books.
Sun has extended Microsoft's Java license through the end of 2007. (I guess they're buddies this month. Name calling and hissy fits are scheduled to resume in May, I'm sure.) Java 1.1 isn't dead yet. However, Microsoft encourage customers "to take proactive measures to stay informed about obsolete software and move away from the MSJVM in a timely fashion. The MSJVM is no longer available for distribution from Microsoft and there will be no enhancements to the MSJVM. Microsoft products and SKUs currently including the MSJVM will continue to be retired or replaced by versions not containing the MSJVM on a schedule to be announced."
Apple has released version 1.2 of XCode, though as usual their porrly designed site that violates various prinicples of the web architecture prevents me from linking directly to it. Developers who've signed Apple's loyalty oath can probably find it somewhere on the Apple Developer Connection.
.NET programmer Raymond Chen doesn't realize it, but he's arguing in favor of checked exceptions.
JetBrains has released IntelliJ IDEA 4.0.3, a popular $499 payware integrated development environment for Java that runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Unix. Version 4.0.3 is a minor release that makes "stability improvements and bug-fixes."
Gaudenz Alder has released version 3.3 of JGraph, an open source graph component for Swing that requires Java 1.4 or later. JGraph is accompanied by Graphpad, an open-source diagram editor for Swing that offers Automatic Layout, Printing, Zoom, and much more. It is available in English, German and French. New features in 3.3 include view-local attributes, sizeable in-place editors, and sizing and moving along one axis. Of course, various bugs have been fixed as well.