Develop Reference

finding out gracefully the version of makeindex

I wrote something like a make-tool for latex documentation (in fact a maven plugin https://github.com/Reissner/maven-latex-plugin).
As this invokes just a bunch of command line tools
and i frequently have problems when new versions of those tools come up, i decided to provide a way to check the versions (in fact a goal).
E.g. i let my tool invoke pdflatex -v to get version of pdflatex.
This works fine for all tools but makeindex,
because makeindex offers no regular way, to get the version and nothing but that.
To find out by hand i just type makeindex and then ctrl-d on my bash shell.
The result is then
This is makeindex, version 2.15 [TeX Live 2020] (kpathsea + Thai support).
Scanning input file stdin...done (0 entries accepted, 0 rejected).
Nothing written in stdout.
Transcript written in stderr.
The keystroke ctrl-d seems to be tied to unicode 0004.
So from the bash shell, this works just fine.
Is there a way to do that with a java execution?
I tried to invoke (java string)
"makeindex \u0004" and related.
No success,... makeindex just quits with an error.
To be honest, I dont know why because from the terminal all is fine.
The last problem to solve: the procedure shall be platform independent.
Now tried some hack providing a dummy file.
But of course this is the contrary of elegant.

Assuming you use texlive, you could use
tlmgr info --only-installed --data="localrev" makeindex
which returns something like
52851
This is the revision information from the makeindex package you have installed. This is not the version number, but should be enough to detect if the installed version changes.

Java/VMs: Copying text that gets FEFF control character, occasionally creates question mark

So, at my job, I've got a ticket to fix a bug that I'm not really sure is fixable. So, here's the deal:
Our application is a java Swing app that configures the under-the-hood engine that runs. All of our machines at the office are Macs, but to ensure cross-platform functionality we frequently do things in Windows VMs.
So, the guy who reported this, is working in his Windows VM using VirtualBox. He copies some text from our application in the Windows VM to our application in Mac. Our application saves its state in XML configuration files. When he then saves the changes, the text in the XML config file has a "?" character where the FEFF control character was.
Now, I've been going over our code. The paste operation drops the code into a JTable with a custom CellEditor, but the cell editor has nothing special regarding copy/paste operations. Literally no code whatsoever on that issue.
When the application then goes to write everything to the XML configuration file when it saves, it uses the org.w3c.dom.* libraries (the standard Java XML libraries) to do it. Again, can't see anything special here.
My gut says that this might not be solvable, that it might just be an issue from copying between VMs, something is getting weirdly corrupted. Anyone else ever encounter something similar or have an idea on this?
I really don't have any code samples to paste here, but anything anyone could ask for I'll try to provide.

Java Command Line Arguments - Why?

I'm a noobie to Java and I had some questions, I think they may be easy (duh) answers to you experts but for me, I couldn't figure out the answer.
What is the point of Java programs, all I am making in my class now are simple read text files, have user input some stuff on the command line and the program prints out something. Like, it's cool and all that I can make a program do this but what does this all lead up to?
Say, I create a java program that converts celcius to fahrenheit and I want to have someone use it. Would I be able to get someone to use it that has no knowledge of Java, that is to say, giving it to my mom and she can run it from her computer without using Eclipse? How do I have someone who has no knowledge of coding run my program?
And my last question is, what is the point of command line arguments? Instead of putting them in the arguments, why not just have it in the code itself? Is it because if the code is big, it might be hard to find it? And if I download code that requires argument input, is it possible to download the code with the arguments set in Eclipse or would I have to manually do it?
Thanks, sorry for the long paragraph, but just wanted to put my thoughts down.

I think the short answer is modularity. Compiling or building a Java program takes time and knowledge (like you mentioned, someone who has no knowledge of Java probably wouldn't know what to do).
Passing in command line arguments allows you to just send someone the binary distribution of your program and passing in their own parameters without having to know what your code looks like or have to modify it.
In real life, programs aren't run from Eclipse (obviously), they're usually packaged into jars or wars and executed from the command line or some kind of app server.
If you download code that requires command line arguments, you will probably have to put them into Eclipse yourself, but hopefully the application has some documentation or help usage that explains what the arguments should look like.

You can create your own jar files that you can run from the console.
One of the simpliest ways to make your program usable without using Eclipse is with the Windows command prompt or Linux terminal:
go to you working directory (where your java file is stored)
Type javac (Example:javac hello.java) -This would compile your program
Type java (Example: java hello) - This will start it
Using of args is when you want to set some information to your program with the launching of the program.
Another way to start your program without using Eclipse is to make your own executable jar. With this you will get something like .exe file From which you can start your aplication
Most of the java programs are started from the CMD / terminal, or runs on java servers. There are aplication which have their own user interface (SWING, SWT, AWT ...) .
Most popular types of Java usage is creating a serious bussiness software, android aplications, complex web aplications etc.

what is the point of command line arguments?
Benefits of using Command line.
if I download code that requires argument input, is it possible to
download the code with the arguments set in Eclipse or would I have to
manually do it?
Right Click on project-name > Run > Run Configuration > select Arguments tab
For more info click here.
What is the point of Java programs, all I am making in my class now
are simple read text files, have user input some stuff on the command
line and the program prints out something. Like, it's cool and all
that I can make a program do this but what does this all lead up to?
This is just the begining. Learn Java core. Get familiarized with Java. One day you will be building tools using Java. eg:- Apache
How do I have someone who has no knowledge of coding run my program?
Compiling a java program into an executable
Before you do any this, get a book on Java (my fav - Java The Complete Reference) and read it. Learn how Java works, why is it different from other languages, best practices etc...
After 2-3 years from now, you'll get the importance of taking a small step by building simple cmd line programs using Java

Java phonetics or language pronounciation

I am currently making a project for school, where I am going to make a program which teaches children how to read. My basic idea for the program was produce the sentence and then get Windows Anna to say it. My question to you is, how can I access Winodws Anna through Java? and is there a better way of doing this?
Thanks

If having the program access internet is acceptable, then you could use iSpeech.
You can use their API, but the problem with that is that it is limited to 200 uses/day.
iSpeech has decently sounding voices, generally more polished than other TTS engines I've tired like espeak or FreeTTS, because it actually pronounces the words more fluently. Sure, it might pronounce 'Wind', relating with air, as 'Wind', relating to twisting, but other than that, it speaks quite well.
Also, while I haven't had any prior experience with this, I found an article that shows you how to access the MS Speech with command line (which can obviously be commanded through Java[if you do not know how, here is a good article]). It is located here. In command line, all you do is type in 'SayDynamic.exe* the text you want to speak".
*Or SayStatic, the other download available on the page.
This method seems to be better in terms of speed and not relying on internet access, but it definitely does NOT pronounce things as well as iSpeech. I guess the ideal thing for your program to have would be to use iSpeech when online, and use the Say*.exe when offline.
The site also provides the source code of the program. As you might notice, it is NOT Microsoft Anna's voice, but you can specify that in the source and recompile it.
Hope I helped!

You can use command line utiity NirCmd that uses text-to-speech API installed on Windows.
So, supply this utility together with your java application and run it with appropriate command line.

You can try FreeTTS : a speech synthesizer written in java.
You can try to call the Microsoft Speech API (SAPI) but I don't know how to do it in java.
Can you tell us how you invoke NirCmd ?
Altenatively to NirCmd, you can build your own tool in C# that will read the text. The text could be within a txt and your tool invoked with the path to that txt as argument. You can easily adapt a demo project like this one : http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/19334/Text-to-Speech-using-Windows-SAPI

There is the Speech platform of Windows
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27226
The Speech runtime
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27225
You can use JNA (not JNI) to interact with dll from java
https://github.com/twall/jna

JTable won't display Unicode correctly when the application is executed from the command line or a jar file. It works fine in eclipse, though

I'm writing an application that reads a text file containing a list of vocabulary words in both English and Chinese. These are then displayed in a JTable. When I run or debug the app in Eclipse, everything displays fine. I can see and read the characters and the English. However, when I execute the app from the command line or from an executable jar, it's all wrong. The characters show up as either squares or as gibberish.
I also have a text box that when I type Chinese into it, it displays correctly.
My first thought was that it was a font problem. I was using a font installed on my system. Since I can't guarantee that the person using this app will have that font, I moved it to a resource folder and load the font from a file. The font appears as though it's been loaded so I'm convinced it's not a font issue.
I found another question that suggested using -Dfile.encoding=utf-8. I've tried this and it did not work.
Would the brilliant folks at Stack Overflow have any advice on how to make this work?

I'm writing this on a non-chinese version of Windows.
Well then you won't ever be able to get a Java program to produce Chinese command-line output.
Java, like almost all languages, uses the C standard library which has byte-based IO. The Windows command prompt interprets byte-based IO using the locale-specific default code page. That's never a UTF, so Unicode characters outside of the current locale's default code page just won't work.
(In theory you should be able to get it to work by changing your console fonts and using chcp 65001 (UTF-8) together with -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8, but in practice it doesn't work reliably due to bugs in the C runtime. Unicode on the command prompt is a long-standing sore point.)