Now available is a new com.oreilly.servlet release containing several substantial improvements in its file upload capabilities.

First, I've added support for internationalized filenames and parameter values. Previously all filenames were assumed Latin-1, but that only covers Western European languages. Now the library can support file names in any Java-supported encoding. This feature has been high on the wish list of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean programmers.

Second, I've added support for pluggable file renaming logic, so that if two files are uploaded concurrently to the same directory, the MultipartRequest class will notice and execute programmer-specified logic. One standard implementation is available in the package; it appends increasing integers to the filename.

Lastly, numerous bugs have been fixed. Most noticeable is an improvement in header handling to better support the Opera browser.

I hope you enjoy it. Please respect the license.

OpenOffice released 1.0 today. It looks substantially improved over StarOffice 5.2 -- fast startup and no funky desktop. I'm proud to say I helped in my own way.

I didn't code, but nearly two years ago while I was working at CollabNet, it was my job to fly to Germany and prepare the Sun engineers for "going open". They have more than a hundred engineers and engineering managers on the project in Hamburg, and in small groups I talked with roughly half of them. (Each was supposed to teach a buddy.)

The engineers were supportive of the open source move. They had some justifiable concerns, of course. The project was larger with an older codebase than any open source project that had come before. They knew they had to break new ground and change their way of developing and interacting with users.

I recall some people in management needed convincing things wouldn't fall apart. My own words couldn't convince them. They had to see proof. I'm hoping this 1.0 release, if it's as solid as it's reported to be, will act as that proof.