[Announce] Apache POI 3.1 BETA2 Released

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

Hi All,

The POI team is pleased to announce the release of 3.1 BETA2 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.

Summary of changes since 3.1-beta1:
    * fix44306 - fixed reading/writing of AttrPtg(type=choose) and method toFormulaString() for CHOOSE formulas(POI-DEVELOPERS)
    * fix24207 - added HSSFName.isDeleted() to check if the name points to cell that no longer exists(POI-DEVELOPERS)
    * fix40414 - fixed selected/active sheet after removing sheet from workbook(POI-DEVELOPERS)
    * fix44523 - fixed workbook sheet selection and focus(POI-DEVELOPERS)
    * fix45000 - Fixed NPE in ListLevel when numberText is null(POI-DEVELOPERS)
    * fix44985 - Properly update TextSpecInfoAtom when the parent text is changed(POI-DEVELOPERS)
    * fix41187 - fixed HSSFSheet to properly read xls files without ROW records(POI-DEVELOPERS)
    * fix44950 - fixed HSSFFormulaEvaluator.evaluateInCell() and Area3DEval.getValue() also added validation for number of elements
      in AreaEvals(POI-DEVELOPERS)
    * fix42570 - fixed LabelRecord to use empty string instead of null when the length is zero.(POI-DEVELOPERS)
    * fix42564 - fixed ArrayPtg to use ConstantValueParser. Fixed a few other ArrayPtg encoding issues.(POI-DEVELOPERS)
    * fixFollow-on from 28754 - StringPtg.toFormulaString() should escape double quotes(POI-DEVELOPERS)
    * fix44929 - Improved error handling in HSSFWorkbook when attempting to read a BIFF5 file(POI-DEVELOPERS)
    * fix44675 - Parameter operand classes (function metadata) required to encode SUM() etc properly.
      Added parse validation for number of parameters(POI-DEVELOPERS)
    * fix44921 - allow Ptg.writeBytes() to be called on relative ref Ptgs (RefN* and AreaN*)(POI-DEVELOPERS)
    * fix44914 - Fix/suppress warning message "WARN. Unread n bytes of record 0xNN"(POI-DEVELOPERS)
    * fix44892 - made HSSFWorkbook.getSheet(String) case insensitive(POI-DEVELOPERS)
    * fix44886] - Correctly process PICT metafile in EscherMetafileBlip(POI-DEVELOPERS)
    * fix44893 - Take into account indentation in HSSFSheet.autoSizeColumn(POI-DEVELOPERS)


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-beta2".

For the Apache POI Team
Yegor Kozlov