matlab crashes when I press and release "Alt"

[Gerald Diaz]

I know that matlab only officially supports java 1.3, but when I
point matlab towards my 1.4 jre (by setting MATLAB_JAVA env. var),
everything seems to work more or less fine... I can instantiate and
use rather complicated java objects...

Only... when I press the "Alt" button from the MATLAB window, it
prints out a weird swing exception twice (see below), and then
eventually everything begins to hang and I have to kill and restart
Matlab.

Again, this only occurs w/ a 1.4 jvm, and I can crash Matlab in this
way as soon as it starts up, w/out even having made any java
commands, so I'm not sure why any swing calls are being dispatched.

I discovered the problem alt-tabbing to other windows. I'm pretty
much stuck w/ 1.4 because a lot of the already written code I'm
working w/ is 1.4, and it's very annoying when I accidentally press
the alt key and everything comes crashing down on me.

Anyone have any ideas on how to fix this nuissance?

Thanks!
Gerald

(For reference, I'm using a winXP machine, w/ matlab version
6.5.1.199708 Release 13, SP1)

Here is the exception (printed twice before everything hangs):

java.lang.NullPointerException
at
javax.swing.SwingUtilities.getWindowAncestor(SwingUtilities.java:63)
at
com.sun.java.swing.plaf.windows.WindowsPopupMenuUI$AltProcessor.altRel
eased(WindowsPopupMenuUI.java:115)
at
com.sun.java.swing.plaf.windows.WindowsPopupMenuUI$AltProcessor.postPr
ocessKeyEvent(WindowsPopupMenuUI.java:138)
at
java.awt.DefaultKeyboardFocusManager.dispatchKeyEvent(DefaultKeyboardF
ocusManager.java:603)
at
java.awt.DefaultKeyboardFocusManager.preDispatchKeyEvent(DefaultKeyboa
rdFocusManager.java:765)
at
java.awt.DefaultKeyboardFocusManager.typeAheadAssertions(DefaultKeyboa
rdFocusManager.java:698)
at
java.awt.DefaultKeyboardFocusManager.dispatchEvent(DefaultKeyboardFocu
sManager.java:559)
at java.awt.Component.dispatchEventImpl(Component.java:3468)
at java.awt.Container.dispatchEventImpl(Container.java:1623)
at java.awt.Window.dispatchEventImpl(Window.java:1585)
at java.awt.Component.dispatchEvent(Component.java:3439)
at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(EventQueue.java:450)
at
java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForHierarchy(EventDispatchThr
ead.java:197)
at
java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(EventDispatchThrea
d.java:150)
at
java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:144)
at
java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:136)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(EventDispatchThread.java:99)