[Announce] Apache POI 3.1 BETA1 Released

[Yegor Kozlov <ye...@apache.org>]

Hi All,

The POI team is pleased to announce the release of 3.1 BETA1 which is one of the final steps before 3.1 FINAL.

Apache POI is well-known in the Java field as a library for reading and
writing OLE2 office file formats, such as Excel, PowerPoint, Visio and
Word.

The status of this release is a beta, meaning that we encourage users to try it out.
If you find any bugs, please report them to the POI bug database or to
the poi-dev mailing list.

The release contains a mixture of new features and bug fixes, compared
to 3.0.2. The most important changes are:
 - Major improvements in Excel formula evaluation
 - Support for conditional formatting in Excel
 - Handling of embedded OLE2 documents in Excel and PowerPoint
 - Major improvements in the API for PowerPoint (support for Tables,
 better handling of text properties, PPT Graphics2D driver)
 - Export PowerPoint slides into image

A full list of changes is available in the change log:
http://poi.apache.org/changes.html

The source and binaries can be downloaded from your local mirror: 
http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/poi/dev/

The release is also available from the central Maven repository under
Group ID "org.apache.poi" and Version "3.1-beta1".

For the Apache POI Team
Yegor Kozlov