The first “beta” build of the JSR-231 Reference Implementation has been posted to java.net on October 27, 2005. See the Documents and Files section of the JOGL home page, under “Release Builds 2005”.
There are many changes from the previous (1.1.1) release of JOGL. The most obvious is that the namespaces have changed from net.java.games.* to javax.media.opengl.. The position of Buffers passed down to OpenGL is now significant; the pointer passed to C code is a combination of the base of the Buffer plus the scaled position, effectively “slicing” the buffer without creating a new object. This is an idea borrowed from the LWJGL library. All C void arguments are now exposed at the Java level as java.nio.Buffer. All APIs which used to accept Java arrays as arguments now accept either direct or non-direct Buffers; all APIs which previously accepted only direct Buffers continue to do so and this restriction is documented in the Javadoc.
Internally, the JOGL library has been almost completely rewritten. The high-level GLEventListener paradigm is now optional instead of required. Users can manipulate GLContexts and GLDrawables directly to create new contexts, make them current and swap buffers manually. The GLDrawable and GLContext concepts have been implemented on all platforms and the default widgets, GLCanvas and GLJPanel, have been reimplemented in terms of them. It is now possible to write your own heavyweight OpenGL widget (a Canvas subclass) using the public JSR-231 APIs if the GLCanvas does not suit your needs. GLCanvas and GLJPanel can also both be usefully subclassed in the new library. The GLEventListener callback paradigm is now optional. GLAutoDrawables support it, while lower-level GLDrawables do not. The default OpenGL rendering targets (GLCanvas, GLJPanel and GLPbuffer) support it, but users can again build their own widgets which do not use it.
There is some exciting new functionality available in the form of the new Java2D/JOGL interoperability bridge. This is built on the new GLDrawable and GLContext APIs in JSR-231 and offers huge speed increases for the GLJPanel. It is possible to use this bridge in other interesting ways. The XTrans (Accelerated Transition) demo on the JOGL demos page shows off a completely different use of this bridge to provide a compositing JDesktopPane for arbitrary Swing widgets. While the APIs of the bridge are not being standardized at this point, they are still available for experimentation and we encourage you to look at what has been built and see what you can do with it.
There are more changes in the new APIs that need to be documented; this documentation is forthcoming. Please look at the new code and port your existing JOGL applications to the new APIs. While the new APIs are not yet set in stone and there will be some flux during the public review period, they have been fairly thoroughly tested over the past several months and the general structure will probably not change much.
Last but not least, nightly builds are finally available again largely thanks to Travis Bryson from Sun. There is no archiving of the nightly builds; the current one is simply linked from the JOGL home page. Javadoc is automatically generated each night, so you can always see the up-to-date specification. Currently the zip archive of javadoc is not available due to legal requirements of the JSR (we need to add a click-through license for it), and we will need to add copyrights and legal notices to the posted javadoc, but you can now see the API as it evolves.
An extension JNLP file for the current JSR-231 beta is available for developers wishing to test their applications against the new APIs. The link is documented in the JOGL Users’ Guide. Please again keep in mind that this link will change when the JSR is complete and that the APIs are still evolving somewhat.
Please post your feedback about the new APIs and the implementation. The spec is currently in Early Draft Review, which will be followed by the official Public Review period. This is your opportunity to influence the structure of the specification, and we look forward to your input.