[geeks] jvm/bytecode spec?

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Tue, 23 Jun 2009, der Mouse wrote:

> There is a Sun document, but only, as far as I can see, in the form of
> a gazillion Web pages.  Is there anything that pulls it together into a
> single file I can read over (a Web browser is _not_ a suitable
> interface for reading large quantities of text, even if I could assume
> full-time ocnnectivity!), or am I going to have to spider the Sun pages
> and try to pull together bits and pieces to assaemble something usable
> from them?

The JVM Specification was, at one time, available as a compressed
PostScript document, but Sun doesn't seem to have that anymore.

It's possible to get the whole ball of wax as a ZIP file, but it's still
HTML:

   http://java.sun.com/docs/books/vmspec/download/vmspec.2nded.html.tar.gz

If that doesn't do it for you, the wood-pulp edition is $55 from Amazon.
Amazon.com shows it as in-stock, although Amazon.ca does not.

As far as web browser being a poor portal for vast quantities of text,
I've found it to be far better than most anything else outside of print.
PDF viewers are universally awful, and well-written HTML can usually tamed
with a stylesheet.  To Sun's credit, though, the HTML they export for
offline reading tends to be exceptionally sane.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke < "There is great satisfaction in building good tools
Elgin, TX          > for other people to use."
USA               <                                     --Freeman Dyson