The JLS makes extensive use of the term "member." Previous drafts of the Metadata spec defined the term "annotation member" in a way that differed subtly from existing uses of the term "member." The potential for confusion was great. The JLS maintainer notified the JSR-175 Expert Group that "[The term] member is well defined in the JLS and will stay so. This terminology will be changed, so it's best if you all come up with something else."

Therefore, the JSR-175 expert group decided to change the term "annnotation member" (resp. "annotation type member") to "annotation element" (resp. "annotation type element") throughout the JSR-175 spec. This affects several APIs:

public class IncompleteAnnotationException extends RuntimeException {

   public IncompleteAnnotationException(Class annotationType,
                                        String memberName); // **
   public String memberName(); /**
}


public class AnnotationTypeMismatchException extends RuntimeException {

   public AnnotationTypeMismatchException(Method member, String foundType); /**

   public Method member(); // **
}

(Additionally, several methods in the doclet API are affected; a separate bugID will be used to track those changes.)