What's New in JACOB 1.9

• Event Callbacks
  • Variant parameters can now be modified by the receiver to be passed back to the COM caller
  • Callbacks can now be received when running in JWS other launchers where JACOB.jar is not in the system classloader's path.
• Dispatch API Clarifications
  • All static method's first parameters have been more strongly typed to the Dispatch class, rather than Object. This may call for code changes in the cases of code that just asigned Dispatch objects to variables of type Object rather than Dispatch or one of its subclasses
• Dispatch subclasses are now supported with pointer modifying constructor
  • Dispatch and ActiveXComponent now includes a constructor to be used by Dispatch subclasses that swaps the pointers around. This eliminates the need for every Dispatch subclass to have a constructor that swapped and nulled out the pointers to the COM layer. All samples have updated to use the new api
• ActiveXComponent has been upgraded
  • ActiveXComponent methods return ActiveXComponets
  • Methods have been added to the ActiveXComponents to retrieve parameters as Dispatch objects or ActiveX components. The Script Tests have been updated to show the same programs in Dispatch format or ActiveXComponentFormat
• Memory Management
  • Beta test option that lets an application use automatic object object removal through the use of weak reference hash maps in the ROT class.  The default behavior of manual release via the COMThread class has been retained as the default behavior.  Developers can test automatic memory collection by using the command line option -Dcom.JACOB.autogc=true
• JNI Changes
  • Erroneous Array dimension checking fixed for certain boolean set and get functions
  • Alternative method for finding Variant class for callbacks in JWS or other application lanchers where the system classloader does not know about JACOB classes.
  • Unicode is supported for putString and putStringRef
  • EventProxy zeros out the com object reference in the Variant objects that are created by EventProxy so that they are not double released, by both the Java VM and calling code from the COM side. The caller is supposed to be responsible for releasing the memory it created. This fix only applies to Variants created in callbacks.
• Logging Additions
  • Debugging logging to standard out for JACOB can be turned on by using the command line option -Dcom.JACOB.debug=true
• Visual Studio
  • The VisualStudio directory in the CVS repository will be removed in the next release
• Documentation
  • API documentation via Javadoc  is now being generated for all classes.
  • The development team is looking for help in upgrading the quality of the class documentation
• Build Changes
  • A static method has been added to JacobObject that returns the build version
  • The project is now being built using ANT.  Most of the developers are running this from inside of Eclipse
  • All makefiles have been purged

  Tracked Changes

  Bugs
  1116101	jacob-msg 0284 : Access Violation while garbage collecting
  1114159	Problem with COM Error Trapping in JACOB DLL
  1113610	Bad error check in SafeArray.cpp
  1066698	Minor Memory leak in Dispatch.cpp
  1065533	Problem with unicode conversion
  1053871	solution for memory leak in 1.7
  1053870	JACOB0msg 2019 - Safe Array
  1053866	getHResult only returns 80020009
  960646	But in SafeArray:: getBoolean for 2D arrays
  Patches
  1115187	EventCallbacks fail w/Variant ClassNotFoundException in JWS
  1105915	Fix for event handling memory corruption
  1090104	Weak Reference in teh ROT
  1068544	in/out parameter support for event handlers
  981540	jre 1.4.2 fix as patch
  Feature Requests
  1049390	static Version information
  1049224	Javadocs or at least script to generate it
  1049158	API to get ProgId of ActiveXComponent

What's New in JACOB 1.8

• Move To SourceForge The project is not housed at Sourceforge.net.
• Licensing Change All limitations on commercial use of JACOB have been removed and it is now being developed under a BSD license at Sourceforge.net.
• Compiled with Java 1.4.2 Version 1.8 was compiled with JSEE 1.4.2 and fixes the compilation bug that was remnant of compilation with JDK 1.1.
• Baseline For Change This version is the baseline for the first CVS checkin and we encourage people to start contributing to the project with this version.