Greetings PMC. Many people are floundering around the internet trying to figure out what the screenshot that Notch recently posted (attached to this blog) means. There are several things that people seem to be confused about and so I will clear up as much as I can.

The first thing we are going to look at is everything but the enchanting interface. You might have noticed that the hearts in the healthbar look different, which is because they are different. The upcoming Hardcore mode (as created by PC Gamer) does not allow you to respawn and instead deletes the world when you die. The hearts that you see in this picture are the healthbar that you will have if you are playing on that mode.

Next up, there is a large green twelve in the center of the hotbar area between the player's health and their hunger. This is not the player's level, it is the number of skillpoints that you have. Currently, in 1.8.1, your skillpoints are hidden because you cannot use them for anything. According to the demo video that Notch has shown of the Adventure Update before the release of 1.8, you receive 3 skill points every time you completely fill your experience bar, though this may change (this one looks like they need one more orb).

The most obvious thing that we can see is the actual interface for the enchanting table. This interface has a slot for a single item, which is a gold sword, and speculation is that gold items will be the only ones that can be enchanted, but this is not confirmed by anyone. To the right of that are the options for the three different strengths of enchantment. As we can see, they require 3, 7, and 15 skill points each, which is made obvious from the fact that all four of those numbers are written in exactly the same font and color. As the player has 12 skill points, the strongest level of enchantment is currently disabled. When an item is enchanted, you will spend those skill points, so if you want to enchant several items with the strongest enchantments, you will need a very large number of skill points.

The writing on the different levels of enchantment is actually not gibberish, but is written in the Standard Galactic Alphabet from the Commander Keen series of video games. The different spell levels have been translated below.

1. well played internets you are good
   
2. these names will be random and confusing
   
3. each spell costs experience levels
   

It is unknown if the enchanting table will need to be crafted or found, though the fact that it shows up in a very fancy library, and thus-far, there are only a small handful of blocks that cannot be placed, it is very unlikely that you will not be able to get one and place it where you want. It makes sense that you might find these in a stronghold inside of the library area, but that is my own speculation.

Update: The book that is seen on top of the table spins when there is nobody nearby and when someone comes close, the book turns towards them and opens, flipping pages randomly while it does so. This animation is passive like the particle effects from portals and torches.