Table of Contents:
I. Welcome
II. Installation Notes
III. User Tips
IV. Known Problems and Caveats
V. Questions and Answers
VI. Swing
VII. Deployment and Jar Tools
VIII. Documentation corrections
IX. Contacting Symantec for Technical Support

I. Welcome

• Do not install Visual Cafe 3.0 over previous versions of Visual Cafe.
• You do not need to uninstall previous versions of Visual Cafe.
• Do not use the percent symbol (%) in the Visual Cafe directory name.

If you are using the FAT16 file system in Windows 95/98, the total installed size of Visual Cafe is significantly affected by the cluster size of the hard drive partition used. The total installed size will be substantially larger for drive partitions with 32k clusters (1-2GB drives) than for drive partitions with 16k (513MB-1GB) or 8k (257-512MB) cluster sizes.

If you are using the FAT32 file system (Windows 98, Windows 95 OS-R2 or later), the installer overestimates the total install size requirements for Visual Cafe. For example, a Typical install on a FAT32 drive will require approximately 160MB. However, the installer reports the requirement as 238MB. If you wish to install Visual Cafe on a drive that has less space than required by the installer, but has sufficient hard drive space, you can temporarily move files to another drive for installation and then back after installation is complete. You can also try a using the Custom installation option.

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III. User Tips

In order to run any of your JDK 1.1.x applets in the Netscape browser, we recommend Netscape Navigator 4.5 or Netscape Navigator version 4.04 plus the JDK 1.1 Smart Update for version 4.04 available from Netscape at http://developer.netscape.com/software.

Occasionally applets may fail to execute when run in Netscape Navigator 4.5. Applets should run if executed a second time while a browser window is already open.

Netscape will issue some security violation exceptions when you attempt to execute or debug applets from within Visual Cafe. To avoid this security constraint, please add the following options to your prefs.js file:

user_pref("unsigned.applets.low_security_for_local_classes", true);
user_pref("signed.applets.local_classes_have_30_powers", true);
user_pref("signed.applets.low_security_for_local_classes", true);
user_pref("signed.applets.verbose_security_exception", true);

Notes:
1. This file states that it should not be edited by hand. In order to add entries to this file, you must first close all running instances of the Netscape Navigator. You may then edit the file manually.

2. You will see a message in the Java console, "# Security Exception: checkpropsaccess.key". This message can be ignored.

3. Most security errors can be avoided by publishing the applet to a web server.

For more information on Netscape security please refer to the following URLs:

http://developer.netscape.com/support/faqs/champions/security.html

http://developer.netscape.com/library/technote/security/sectn3.html

JFC Documentation
Sun's JFC documentation is located in the \VisualCafe\Documentation\JFC directory.

SC.INI
Visual Cafe uses the CLASSPATH from the sc.ini file in the <"VCafe">\Bin directory. The CLASSPATH in sc.ini, by default, does not contain the environment classpath (e.g.,%CLASSPATH%). Existing projects relying on the Windows environment classpath setting may fail to build. To correct this, you may either add the package directories manually to the sc.ini classpath, add the package directories to the project in project/options/directories, or add the %CLASSPATH% variable to the end of the classpath line in the sc.ini file.

IV. Known Problems and Caveats

Please see Swing and Deployment and JAR Tools sections for known problems in these areas.

When converting a 1.0 project that used a card layout with unnamed cards, backparsing will fail. To work around this, you must manually edit the add()statements for those cards without names. It is important to note that JDK 1.1 has disallowed unnamed cards in a card layout; the same code would also fail at runtime in a JDK 1.1 VM.

Class Browser
If the source files are not compilable, the Class Browser may behave unpredictably. Please compile the source files before using the Class browser to avoid this behavior.

Classes with methods that use array arguments
Visual Cafe may not interpret methods with array arguments correctly when the classes containing those methods are in the Component Library. This appears in various ways. For example:

• After a parse, interactions affected by the incorrectly interpreted methods may not display correctly in the Form Designer.
• After a parse, interactions affected by the incorrectly interpreted methods may not be editable in the Interaction Wizard.
• Customizers and custom property editors are unavailable to restore initial values and will throw exceptions.

Debugging when multiple projects are open
Do not run the debugger when multiple projects are open because the debugger can become confused. A typical example of this condition is when you have two projects open and a breakpoint is set in one of the projects; the debugger does not know which project contains the breakpoint.

Environment Options dialog when running 640x480
When first opened, the <OK>,<Cancel>,<Apply> and <Help> buttons of the Environment Options dialog bleed off the bottom of the display. To access these buttons, grab the title bar and move the dialog upward.

Errors when starting Visual Cafe
A corrupt project may result in Visual Cafe refusing to launch or crashing upon launch if the On Startup option in the Tools | Environment Options dialog - General tab is set to: "Open the last project." This can be avoided by double clicking a .java file to launch Visual Cafe without opening the last project. If you determine that the project is corrupt, it can be rebuilt using the Empty Project template. Please see page 3-25 in the User's Guide for instructions on working with Empty Projects.

If you encounter certain errors when starting Visual Cafe or if your Component Palette appears empty, delete the following files from \VisualCafe(SE|PE|DE)\Bin:

*.rps
*.reg
*.vws

Note: Some of the errors are:

"No starter templates could be found"
"Cannot open local repository"
"Cannot open registry"

These files are platform-dependent and must be regenerated when switching from one operating system or to another machine.

Java Beans
When a Bean has multiple types of event listeners that implement event types having the same name, Visual Cafe will generate code to handle that event type only for the first listener. If you select that event type for the second event listener, it generates the code for using that event type from the first listener.

Visual Cafe uses the code generation model. If a Bean has a property editor, the method PropertyEditor.getJavaIntializationString() must be properly implemented.

Custom properties: All custom properties must be serializable; otherwise Visual Cafe cannot initialize the state of the Bean.

If a custom bean has been placed in a Component Palette tab, and AutoJAR is used to update the bean, the bean is deleted from the tab. You can avoid this by adding a toolbar value to the beaninfo such as the following:

import java.src.com.symantec.itools.vcafe.beans.BeanDescriptorAttributes;
BeanDescriptorVname.setValue(BeanDescriptorAttributes.TOOLBAR_ATTRIBUTE,ToolbarPaletteTabName);

where BeanDescriptorVname is the name of your bean descriptor variable and ToolbarPaletteTabName is the name of the Toolbar Palette tab where the bean is displayed.

Changing the package of a project Bean after it has been added to a form will not change the class property and will cause code generation problems when it is used.

Javadoc
Producing Javadoc documentation will not generate an images folder in your project API folder if the following conditions exist:

• You are using Windows98
• You have set the Javadoc System Documentation Directory to the same directory as the Javadoc Documentation Directory. (This option is set in the Directories tab in the Project Options.)

Copy the Java\Docs\Images folder to your project API folder to work around this problem or reset the Javadoc System Documentation Directory to a different directory.

Javadoc Editor
Placement of Javadoc comments on variables that are inside the DECLARE_CONTROLS block will be removed upon code regeneration and is not supported.

The Javadoc Editor may not properly switch from one file to another when the following conditions exist:

• You are using MDI mode
• You right-clicked on the file from the Files tab of the Project window to invoke the Javadoc Editor

If the source files are not compilable, the Javadoc Editor may behave unpredictably. Please compile the source files before using the Javadoc Editor to avoid this behavior.

JDK Version incompatibilities
Symantec Visual Cafe 3.0 supports version 1.1.7a of the Java Development Kit from Sun Microsystems.
Please see http://www.javasoft.com for information regarding specific OS incompatibilities with the JDK.

JMaskedText and MaskedTextField
Numeric masks in the masked fields can be forced to accept non-numeric inputs by using copy and paste.
The method isDataComplete() in JMaskedTextField and MaskedTextField currently returns true regardless of changes made to the component.

JSplitPane
JSplitPane is not supported visually in this release of Visual Cafe.

JTable or JList in a JScrollPane
A JTable or JList in a JScrollPane will not scroll automatically when an item out of the current viewable area is selected.

Known Online Help issues
Pressing F1 help on some components or properties may not bring up the help for that item. If you want to view the help for a component or property, and F1 did not bring up the correct help, use the Contents Tab in the Online Help by selecting Help Topics from the Help menu. You may also search for the item in help by using the Index or Find tabs in the Online Help. Components and properties may also be found by looking in the API Reference Online Help.

In the Source window, pressing F1 on component and property names (such as Frame or setLayout) will also access the API Reference Online Help.

Large JAR files and the component library
Under Windows 95 it is best to drop larger JAR files one at a time into the Component Library window. This is a problem with the Java VM under Windows 95, and we expect it to be resolved in version 1.2 of the Java VM.

Look and Feel
The Look And Feel menu item is used at design time only and does not apply to runtime.

Lightweight component behavior between JDK 1.1 and 1.1.7
Between JDK 1.1 and JDK 1.1.7, behavior of lightweight components has changed in many ways (primarily to fix problems in the initial implementation). If you run your program in an environment with an implementation of lightweight components that is earlier than the implementation in JDK 1.1.7, behavior of the lightweight components may vary.

Macro
When editing a a Macro in the source editor, if the argument for VisualCafeCommand.sendKeys('') is a double byte character, then the macro can only paste the second byte.

Memory Warnings

"Out of Virtual Memory" warnings
If you encounter an "Out of Virtual Memory" warning under Windows NT with 128 MB or more of RAM, you may have come across a reported NT bug. The symptoms are a sudden jump in the "Mem Usage" graph in the Performance tab in the Windows NT Task Manager. A sudden memory allocation of 100 MB or more can occur and is not returned unless the system is rebooted.
To prevent this error, change the paging file size settings in Settings | Control Panel | System | Performance to the same or greater size as the amount of physical RAM in the machine. Choosing the Recommended Paging File size is also a safe choice.

Low-memory warning on startup
If the sum of your system's available physical memory (RAM) and swap space on disk is below a minimal level when Visual Cafe starts up, a warning dialog will notify you of this condition. It advises you to increase swap space (see below). You have the option of ignoring this warning (answer "No" to the "Quit?" prompt), and proceeding to run Visual Cafe with low memory resources. With light use, you may not experience any problems at all. But with typical use, at some time in the course of your Visual Cafe session you may begin to see "low virtual memory" warnings from the operating system. Typical symptoms of running any complex application with too little available memory are sluggish performance and unstable system behavior.

If the warning dialog recommends that you increase swap space by some small amount, such as 2 or 3 MB, increase the minimum swap space on Windows NT or free disk space on Windows 95/98 by at least 5 MB.

For Windows 95/98, if the option is selected to let the OS manage swap space (default setting) in Settings | Control Panel | System | Performance | Virtual Memory, then available swap space is simply the amount of free disk space; but note that there is no guaranteed minimum: if the disk is full, there is no swap space available.

For Windows NT 4.0, choose Settings | Control Panel | System | Performance and click the Change button. The page file setting that matters most to an application under NT is the initial page size setting. On a system with 32 MB RAM, the initial swap space should be not less than 20 MB, and 32 MB is better. A reasonable setting for the maximum is at least twice the initial size.

For further details about virtual memory, see the OS Help in the System dialog box.

Parse All Imports option
When using the Parse All Imports option, allow the parser to finish parsing before editing or changing a file. To view the status of the parser, select Messages from the Visual Cafe View menu.

Stepping over a statement in a try block while debugging
In some cases, stepping over a statement in a try block that triggers an exception will cause the program to terminate. To get around this, set a breakpoint in your catch block. This breakpoint will get hit and you can continue to debug.

TextArea AWT component
Adding more than 20KB of text to the TextArea component can cause unexpected behavior or a crash.

Using Visual Cafe on 256 colors displays
If you are using a color scheme other than the default Windows scheme on a 256 color display, the Form Designer and some dialogs may display colors differently.

Z-order of heavyweight components
Z-order of heavyweight java.awt components is undefined in JDK 1.1.7. As of this writing, the current JDK 1.1 versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape both use the same z-order. However, this may not be true in future versions of either Web browser or of other Java execution environments.

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V. Questions and Answers

A: The key mappings for the text editor for Visual Cafe 3.0 have been updated to match many other common Windows editors. To get the familiar key mappings from earlier versions of Visual Cafe, go to the Keyboard tab of the Environment Options dialog and select "vcafe2" from the File drop-down list.

Q: When I open a project in the Form Designer, the dialog for Dial Up Networking appears. If I log on, all is well. If I cancel, Visual Cafe "hangs" for several minutes.

A: The use of relative URLs (for example, IMAGES/test.gif) can cause this behavior on some systems. To avoid it, use absolute URLs (for example, file://C:/.../PROJECT/IMAGES/test.gif) during design time and then switch to relative URLs for deployment.

Q: I would like to distribute my applications created with Visual Cafe along with the Symantec Virtual Machine. Do I need to obtain a license to distribute the Symantec JIT and JVM?

A: The Symantec JIT and JVM included with Visual Cafe are not redistributable. JavaSoft has licensed the Symantec JIT for redistribution in the JRE. The JRE is Sun's Java Runtime Environment and is freely redistributable. Please visit http://www.javasoft.com for more specific information regarding the JavaSoft JRE.

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VI. Swing

DebugGraphicsOption
If you set the DebugGraphicsOption to FLASH_OPTION on JFC components it will cause Visual Cafe to act unpredictably since it puts threads to sleep in the internal VM used by Visual Cafe.

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VII. Deployment and JAR Tools

• The Deployment feature replaces the JAR Packager. Deployment is implemented very differently than the JAR Packager. Please refer to the online help and users guide for more information.
• The underlying AutoJAR code has been replaced with Deployment. Please refer to the Online Help or User's Guide for more information.
• The bundler.properties file is no longer used. All options are now accessible through the Deployment Project Options.

General

• It is recommended that you do not use the "copy resources to output directory" option if your source and archive output directory are in the same location. If you do this all resources will be overwritten with the same contents but the date will change; causing a potential problem with version control systems.
• Sun JAR signing must work on the command line before you can use it inside of Visual Cafe.
• When signing a JAR file locally, the JAR file name created is appended with a .sig extension. For example, foo.jar.sig.
• When signing a JAR file via FTP, the JAR file name created is the same as in the Project Options. For example, foo.jar.
• The directory location for FTP is server dependent. You must know the appropriate syntax for each FTP server you will connect to.
• AutoJAR ignores the "Create Standalone Archive" option. All JARs created with AutoJAR contain only the files in the Project.
• All files in your Project that you include in an Archive must be on the system CLASSPATH for deployment to find them. If the files are not on the CLASSPATH, you will receive an error message.
• Classes dynamically loaded by the methods forName(), getResource(), and getBundle(), etc. do not show up as JAR entries; you must add them manually. If you add them to your project, then Deployment will be able to find them.
• There is a bug in the JDK that results in corrupt JAR entries being created in compressed JARs. If you get a Cannot Find File error message when creating a JAR, you may be able to fix it by uncompressing the JAR that you are getting the JAR from and re-JARing it without compression.
• When creating a JAR from a project, you should not create a JAR that has the same name as a JAR that is referenced outside of your project. For example: If you are using a SpecialGrid in c:\SGRID.JAR from a third party vendor in your project, do not create a JAR with the name of c:\SGRID.JAR.
• Jar Viewer: The manifest display is limited to 32K of text. To view Manifest files that are larger than 32K, multi select (shift-click) the entries that are less than 32K, and add one at a time.
• When using signing for a JAR, the *.sig file name will be different than your *.jar file name. If you want them to use the same file name, manually rename your *.sig file.

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VIII. Documentation Corrections

All Books
The icons that appear in the New Project dialog and the project templates in the Component Library are different in the shipping product than in the documentation.

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IX. Technical Support

symantec.support.itools.win.vcafe.compilation
symantec.support.itools.win.vcafe.database
symantec.support.itools.win.vcafe.deployment
symantec.support.itools.win.vcafe.development_environment
symantec.support.itools.win.vcafe.distributed
symantec.support.itools.win.vcafe.execution
symantec.support.itools.win.vcafe.installation&upgrade
symantec.support.itools.win.vcafe.other

Note: your company's firewall may prevent you from accessing this NNTP service.

2. Free Web-based discussion group support is available for as long as you own Visual Cafe on Symantec's Web site.

Please refer to the discussion groups under:

http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/index.html

Please send bug reports to:

techsupp@devtools.symantec.com

3. If your User ID and Password become inoperative, please send e-mail notification to Customer Service at:

cafe@symantec.com

with your name, address, daytime phone number, ID and password. Please type "Visual Cafe" in the subject field. We will respond shortly thereafter.

4. If you have lost your Visual Cafe ID set, please send notification to Customer Service at:

cafe@symantec.com

In the event that your information does not appear in our registration database, we will provide additional avenues for verification of ownership.

Thank you for using Visual Cafe 3.0. We are confident that this product will enhance and improve the productivity of your development efforts.

Sincerely,

The Symantec Internet Tools Team

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