Is octave.jar part of the public Octave API?

[Andrew Janke]

Hi, Octave maintainers,

Are the Java classes in octave.jar (in the org.octave Java package) part 
of the public API of Octave? That is, can Octave users call them, and 
expect them to work, and not change between Octave releases?

I'm asking because I'd like to take a stab at this FIXME in 
scripts/miscellaneous/methods.m:

    ## FIXME: Function prototype accepts java obj, but doesn't work if obj
    ##        is e.g., java.lang.String.  Convert obj to classname then.
    try
      mtds_str = javaMethod ("getMethods", "org.octave.ClassHelper", obj);
    catch
      obj = class (obj);
      mtds_str = javaMethod ("getMethods", "org.octave.ClassHelper", obj);
    end_try_catch
    mtds_list = strsplit (mtds_str, ';');

And a proper fix will probably require some minor changes to method 
names and signatures in org.octave.ClassHelper.

If they're not public API, maybe they should be in the package 
"org.octave.internal" to indicate that?

Cheers,
Andrew