As PDF files can contain lots of Javascript, Nashorn is of particular interest to us. So I was curious to know what has happened in the last 12 months since it was announced at JavaOne 2011.
Nashorn is a replacement for the Rhino Javascript library (hence Nashorn which is Austrian for Rhino). It takes advantage of the new invoke dynamic feature of the JVM (Not available when Rhino was written) to provide a faster more powerful library.
In 2012, the initial code is written and has been made available to test and work on further performance gains. Oracle has released the code and has a number of partners testing it. It is already being used as it is in the new NetBeans 7.3 release. It is already an order of magnitude faster than Rhino and you can also call it directly. It currently fails one Javascript test so its compliance level in comparable to Chrome.
All of which is excellent news if you are interested in Javascript and the Java platform!
If you want more information on JavaOne and further coverage of the entire event check out our JavaOne Series Index, which covers everything that is happening and is constantly updated, keep checking back for new info!
I have a minor nitpick 🙂 It’s German, not Austrian.
Austrian was the word Oracle used so I used that. Teach me to check my sources in future! It was very impressive tough!