Thanks again for time, patience and good information.
You were both correct and I was able to use the referenced
tutorial to fix what indeed was an event variable issue. The variable name was "PATH" and the address it wanted was the bin directory of the JDK install.
After updating that, the cmd prompt window did begin to respond to the above commands and I was able to create the JAR file. I also learned that certain commands (c/C) are case sensitive.
I'm pleased to report near success with this project: thanks again. When I copied the JAR and JNLP files to my office's web server and activated a URL to the JNLP, I got "file not found" but I suspect that's because of some type of security setting. After I copied the files to my own godaddy server space, the sortable / filterable table downloaded and operated although "snowboarding" appeared again: my code edits to
table filter demo did not get applied. But I'm quite sure this only means I need to do some more "compile" homework and then update / paste-replace the files.