Make the org.netbeans.spi.project.support.ant.EditableProperties a public
utility class, i.e. move it to a package like org.openide.util.EditableProperties.

EditableProperties class is similar to java.util.Properties but it is designed
to retain additional information needed for safe hand-editing. Making this class
publicly available would be a great benefit to any module that have to deal with
properties file editing. An example here is the tomcatint module that has to
edit the catalina.properties file.

As Jesse pointed out, the main problem is that we cannot simply deprecate the
original version in ant/project because it is used in the signatures of other
ant/project API methods:

http://www.netbeans.org/download/dev/javadoc/org-netbeans-modules-project-ant/org/netbeans/spi/project/support/ant/class-use/EditableProperties.html

Here are some possibilities how to do the change, although non of them seems to
be convenient enough

1. all the methods referring to the old EditableProperties could also be
deprecated and replaced by the new version

2. the old EditableProperties could inherit from the new EditableProperties, if
they are left non final 

3. the old EditableProperties public methods could delegate to those in the new
EditableProperties

I would like to discuss here whether and how to do this api change.