December 16, 2007 5:36 AM PST
Sun releases cool PDF renderer/viewer
Sun has just released a cool Java library - called the SwingLabs PDF Renderer - which "can parse PDF files and draw them to the screen."
Write a PDF once and run it anywhere? Sounds like a good fit for Java! Combined with PDF writing libraries (like iText), you can do pretty much anything you want with PDFs.
Sounds like an exceptionally cool piece of code to drop into a content management system or other code that deals with documents in any way. LGPL and so compatible with a wide range of open-source licenses.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
Today Java is extremely close to properly written C code in terms of speed.
Java is also a viable 3D graphics platform.
Try to keep current.