How is this statement making sense? (Sun's naming convention for Java variables)

Question

I've been quoting this segment from Sun's document for the past few days, and only now do I stop and think about what it's saying, and I can't make any sense of it. Please keep in mind that English is not my first language.

Naming conventions

Variables: Except for variables, all instance, class, and class constants are in mixed case with a lowercase first letter.

How is this making sense? Isn't this saying that class names are in mixed case with a lower-case first letter? Like I should name it class myClass? And class constants are also in mixed case with a lower-case first letter? Like instead of Integer.MAX_VALUE, it should've been named integer.maxValue?

And is it really saying anything about how variables themselves should be named?

Am I not parsing this properly or is this actually a blatant error?

Answer 1

Sun has accepted this as a bug, with low priority:
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4311597

describing the convention for naming variables (the penultimate row in the table). It is plainly wrong - class constants are not in mixed case, as the next row in the table shows. And what is this "except for variables" business? The text is supposed to be describing variables!!

The text should read:

"All instance and class variables are in mixed..."

thus dropping the words "except for variables" and "class constants"

Answer 2

This is a few boxes above it:

Class names should be nouns, in mixed case with the first letter of each internal word capitalized. Try to keep your class names simple and descriptive. Use whole words-avoid acronyms and abbreviations (unless the abbreviation is much more widely used than the long form, such as URL or HTML).

class Raster;
class ImageSprite;

and below that:

The names of variables declared class constants and of ANSI constants should be all uppercase with words separated by underscores ("_"). (ANSI constants should be avoided, for ease of debugging.)

static final int MIN_WIDTH = 4;

static final int MAX_WIDTH = 999;

static final int GET_THE_CPU = 1;

Contradicting, no? "Class constants" should be excluded from that variables convention statement, even if they mean non-static constants of the public final kind, as it confuses people.

As for "except for variables," I believe they mean primitive local variables should only be one word.