The Java Language Specification(Gosling,Joy&Steele) page 146 says that
a final field can only be initialized during the declaration time.

"Any attempt to assign to a final field results in a compile-time error".

But the following code compiles fine with sun javac

public abstract class Font {
    public static final int PLAIN = java.awt.Font.PLAIN;
    public static final int BOLD = java.awt.Font.BOLD;
    public static final int ITALIC = java.awt.Font.ITALIC;

    public final String name;
    public final int style;
    public final int size;

    public static void init() {
        if (BitmapFont.initialize() != 0) {
            // System.err.println("Bitmap fonts loaded.");
        }
    }

    public Font(String name, int style, int size, int ops) {
        this.name = name;
        this.style = style;
        this.size = size;
        this.fontOps = ops;
    }
:
:
}

This code does not compile with the Symantec java compiler.

The Java Programming Language (Arnold & Gosling) page 111, however,
specifies that it's ok to have the blank final declaration and initialize
the final field in the constructor later.