Java Metadata
Just read JSR 175's newly published public draft. Apparently the "@interface" is not a new keyword, but two tokens in one. It could have been written "@ interface".
The @ sign stands for a[nnotation] t[ype].
Implicit in the JSR is the devision of labor between the "Annotation Type Author" and the "Annotator".
I wonder if the annotator's job would be more satisfying than the application assembler. :)
Oh, and we need an XDoclet module to generate the annotation types from actual uses of annotations.