[jdom-interest] Java 1.5 language features.

[Jason Hunter]

Michael Kay wrote:
>> Is there any effort being placed towards introducing Java 1.5 
>> language features into the JDOM API? 
> 
> I've got the same issue with Saxon. I would love to introduce generics into
> the API, but there are still too many users on 1.4 who can't be left behind.
> 
> At the moment with Saxon I'm thinking of introducing a 1.5 API that uses
> generics, to sit alongside the 1.4 API. I'm also thinking of sitting it out
> and waiting until 1.4 is no longer a requirement. It's not easy to decide
> between these two options, and the same applies I'm sure to JDOM.

Exactly.  You either drop support for Java 1.4 (that's premature I think 
still), skip features introduced in Java 1.5 (the present course of 
action), or produce two JARs (a potential source of subtle bugs).

It's indeed unfortunate that the warnings are so prevalent in Java 1.5, 
especially for code patterns that in Java 1.4 are the best code possible 
to write.  They provided us with @SuppressWarnings, but of course that 
requires Java 1.5.

-jh-