java-runtime virtual packages

[Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>]

I'm a little lost about the meaning of the java{1,2}-runtime virtual packages.  
While I think I vaguely recall the difference between "Java 1" and "Java 2", 
it seems to me that a more useful enumeration of the Java runtime versions 
would be 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, etc. (meaning: "I need some Java class library 
that contains the features matching version 1.x of Sun's JDK") and the same 
perhaps for virtual machines.  There is no way to express that now.

Also, none of the free Java packages provide java2-runtime although it seems 
that they can run "Java 2" programs (whatever that means) just fine.  Now I 
see that some packages provide or depend on "java-runtime", which is not 
defined in the policy.

All of that makes the precise expression of dependencies difficult.  Any 
solutions?