how to run tools from a java archive (jar file)

Thanks, but I was after the command-line tools, not the browser. I can also get the browser by double-clicking on the icon but there's something stopping the command-line tools from working.

For example, to compress bigfile.pdf, you use the command,
*java tool.pdf.Compress bigfile.pdf*
and it does things like re-code LZW into Flate.

The tools are incredibly useful.

I thought that I all needed to do was put the file into ~/library/java.

Does this work on your system too? Or does it work if you're in your desktop directory where you downloaded the Multivalent jarfile?

Message was edited by: wyvern-eater

Bob, your e-mail got me thinking enough to solve it. The solution is that the .jar file needs to be explicitly on the classpath:

export CLASSPATH=$HOME/library/java/multivalent.jar:$CLASSPATH

Just the directory alone isn't enough.

True, but then I'd need a copy of Multivalent in every directory where I work with pdf files, or to move those pdf files into the multivalent directory.

It's much easier with the classpath, and to strip the version identifier off the filename to make updates easier.

Not necessarily. The -cp parameter can include a complete file spec. You can create a Unix alias for the whole command line. For example:

alias compress='java -cp ~/JarFolder/Multivalent20060102.jar tool.pdf.Compress'

I use Multivalent tools a lot for maybe a week at a time, then don't touch them for a couple of months. During the downtime I'd just forget aliases like this.

On Macs, the default classpath includes the folder /Library/Java/Extensions. If you drop the jar file into this folder then you won't need to specify an explicit CLASSPATH variable nor the -cp option.

I thought so too, but it doesn't appear to be the case on my computer. Both /Library/java/extensions and ~/library/java are on DefaultClasspath but CLASSPATH is empty. And even when the directories are specified, the jar file in it is ignored unless I specify that explicitly as well. I do not remember needing to do that in the past. It used to just work when it was in a classpath directory.

I get the impression that something has changed in how Mac Java handles the classpath. In searching for answers I noticed that many people were attributing their difficulties to a classpath change in a recent update. It is not something that I see myself dealing with in the near future. But it would be helpful to know of a primer for newcomers to Java and the OS X directory conventions so they know where to put things and what paths to set for basics like this.