Capi’s Corner

As it is one of the FAQs on every Java newsgroup or Java Mailinglists: “How to handle console?”

I came across a nice library that supports console operations on Windows, Linux and Mac OS: JLine.

Check it out, if you really need to work with the console on the mentioned platforms. The libarary works using native features, but I find the handling quite nice: the required DLL for Windows for instance is dynamically extracted from the JAR and loaded, so there is no need for a special installation.

JLine does not provide curses features at the moment, but it is a good approach if you need to read a password from standard in.

If you really like ASCII arts, you should defintely check out JavE.

It might also come handy, if you want to post to newsgroups and want to illustrate some things:

• converts pictures to ASCII art
• draws function graphs
• typesets mathematical formulas
• renders boxes and texts
• and much, much, much more

Just a quick note: A new enterprise named EnterpriseDB is going to take on Oracle, based on the PostgreSQL server. They claim that “EDB2005 includes native support for many Oracle-style features, including SQL syntax, datatypes, triggers, and stored procedures.”

Looks nice, I think it’s worth being tracked.