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help finding documentation

 
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I know this sounds dumb - but there are some really neat things in the docs/technotes that are downloaded with the JDK. There must be some way to find this kind of thing on the Sun site, but I haven't figured out how to do it. Could someone please give me a kind of elaborate hint?

Thanks much! Sorry to be so clueless!
 
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A lot of people post links to the API...

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/

But if you take that up a level -- from "api" to "docs" -- you will see that the API is just one part of the documentation...

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/

Is that what you're looking for?
 
Jinny Morris
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I don't think so - at least I have tried it before and just now tried it again and can't find what I'm looking for.

On my own disk it's in Java\jdk1.6.0_01\jdk-6-doc\docs\technotes\guides\language

It has some neat stuff in it - in particular lovely discussions of enums and the new for-each looping syntax. So I was thinking that surely there's other stuff archived out there somewhere which discusses other language additions for previous releases, and that those would probably be well worth reading. But I haven't been able to figure out how to get there ...

Thanks much!
 
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Just google everything. You are correct, there are a plethora of discussions. It's just a question of how useable they are. Just in the past few days I wrote a wrapper for a beginner/intermediate to address the intractablity of using a socket port that was outside some allowable range.

Finding the allowable port numbers did not take long because it is all in RFC's and so on. Happily I went to coding. Taking a code snippet of of one of these sites that appeared   very   reliable caused me to put up a way of doing it that was totally wrong.

I keep an unpacked set of sources close to my build directory, and have found that to be of greater help than anything else. The Javadoc tool is an extremely efficient improvement over other language camps, but leaves some people who should know better asking some really basic questions that are better answered by looking at what it actually does; not what somebody says it does.

I have found David Eck's javanotes to be so damn good that there isn't much for a beginner that will really and truly compete at the wire. The Certification and Study guides come in next, for their deep understanding of nuances ~ and pose challenging questions that bring the harvest of years of trying to actually do it within reach of the beginner. A 1,000 page certification study guide is a little steep to start off with, but not as steep as you would think.

Then below that, there is lighter reading. One of the people here at the ranch actually co-authored a title named Java, Heads First - but given the way you worded your question, I would skim it before buying it. It may be a little light for you. We get lots of people, enthused by the book then coming in here and asking questions --> so put it on your review list. Beyond that, there is what they call the cattle drive here at the ranch which provides and extremely well paced "place to start" for the beginner.

Java Ranch is for the beginner.
 
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Originally posted by Jinny Morris:
I don't think so - at least I have tried it before and just now tried it again and can't find what I'm looking for.

On my own disk it's in Java\jdk1.6.0_01\jdk-6-doc\docs\technotes\guides\language

It has some neat stuff in it - in particular lovely discussions of enums and the new for-each looping syntax. So I was thinking that surely there's other stuff archived out there somewhere which discusses other language additions for previous releases, and that those would probably be well worth reading. But I haven't been able to figure out how to get there ...

Thanks much!


Go to the page http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/ which Marc gave you in his post.

Do you see the table at the top of the page? You can click on the words in the table. For example, clicking on the header "Java Language" in the table takes you to http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/language/index.html - exactly the page that's on your own disk.

If you scroll down on http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/ you will also find the same links to reference guides.
[ September 23, 2007: Message edited by: Jesper Young ]
 
Jinny Morris
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Thank you! I feel like an idiot - didn't even try clicking on the "Java Language" link because I thought it was the table header!

Hope this shows extreme embarrassment -
 
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When I have to venture into an unfamiliar part of the library, I often google for "sun tutorial" plus the subject. Most often Sun's write-ups are great starting points.
 
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