Surely the webstart descriptor has to count if your app. will *only* work when using webstart

Allowing jars that weren't self-executing was a slight but acceptable flex in the rules - allowing a whole webstart descriptor fo free is a *huge* change, and opens the door for many possible abuses.
For starters you can specify command line parameters for free if the webstart descriptor isn't included.
Erm... knock yourself out. Unfortunately, I don't think you'll gain much more than a good bytecode optimizer will give you. Not to mention that the JAR compression is actually going to work against you as you reduce redundancy.
Thats what I initially thought - however, I disassembled my game last year, and straight away could see dozens of simple optimisations that would cumulatively save 50-100 bytes.
Beyond that it would require code restructing, to take better advantage of the single byte %load_# instructions
I'm not saying it'd be easy, but there is definitely space to be saved there =)
So Abuse, when do we get to see your entry? The world is holding their breath waiting!
Coding all day at work doesn't fill me with enthusiasm to code at home in the evenings/weekends =/
If I take a week off work, then maybe =)
(still got 1 or 2 ideas Kev hasn't pre-empted

)