cameron () (09/26/90)
The latest issue of the PP newsletter ParcNotices (vol 1 no 4, Fall
'90) landed on my desk yesterday. About half of it is devoted to Ow\St
rel 4 (yet another name change :^) A few highlights:
- integration with the underlying window system: every top-level View
becomes a top-level window. They don't say explicitly whether MVC
is still around in modified form or has been tossed - but see below
- SPIM (Smalltalk Portable Imaging Model): "...filled and unfilled
polygons, circular and elliptical arcs and wedges are now easy to
draw and host fonts are supported" "Using a greatest common
multiple approach [I love it!], SPIM enables easy porting of
graphics that will look the same on any supported platform. SPIM
takes advantage of hardware systems with advanced graphics
facilities, while hardware systems with less powerful graphics
facilities are compensated for their shortcomings. For example,
[the] X Windows System [has] several line cap and join styles,
which are not availabel on the Mac. SPIM provides these
capabilities on the Mac."
Sounds like a complete replacement for the DisplayObject hierarchy,
and a powerful one at that. I hope there's an easy way to tell an
object to draw itself in a particular view.
- true colour: colours defined by RGB triplets, which are mapped
appropriately on the machine, including to gray-scale or mono
- incremental garbage collection (I thought we already had that!)
"Programmatic control of the memory management policies has also
been added. Garbage collection now takes place without preempting a
running application"
- international language support - "with a 16-bit character set
optimized to 8 bits for more efficient handling of most European
languages", whatever that means (optimized to 8 bits???)
"...provided that the printer, keyboard and display support the
national-language characters"
I'll quote the whole section on converting up:
"Applications that will need the most conversion are those that perform
sophisticated graphics and/or have made extensive modifications and
extensions to the control architecture of MVC. These applications have
one or more of the following characteristics:
"1. Create and use many windows
2. Perform many graphical drawing operations
3. Employ a distinctive look and feel
4. Perform some animation
5. Perform much text manipulation
6. Use multiple fonts
7. Use user-defined primitives and would like to convert
to the new extensions to user primitives for additional
speed
8. Consume lots of memory
"ParcPlace Systems will provide a number of aids to assist in
converting to Release 4. The documentation includes the Release Notes,
which provide detailed information about Release 4 compared with the
prior release. Also included is a conversion guide, providing detailed
guidelines for programmers who are converting code to Release 4. The
guidelines indicate the degree of impact of system changes and
difficulty of conversion.
"We have also included backward compatibility support. This support
comes in two forms - obsolete messages have been kept in the system,
and file-ins of obsolete classes to assist you in your conversion
effort."
There's a new product called Objectkit\Smalltalk which includes:
analysis tools (benchmarks, checker+, profiler)
communications (terminal emulator)
numeric classes (complex, metanumbers)
programming tools (manual writer, parser-generator [yaoocc?])
additional browsers (project & protocol browsers)
object storage (Binary Object Storage System)
As you can see, some are new, some were in 2.5 (particularly BOSS) and
some were freeware (e.g. protocol browser).
Pricing:
(effective 1 Oct 90) Ow\St U$3500/license on ALL platforms
U$350/license educational, ALL platforms
Ok\St U$500
(effective 10 Sep 90) Support U$525/license - includes unlimited
toll-free phone support, 50% discount on
upgrades, newsletter & bbs access
A note about ordering updates:
"You will receive a letter and update order form in September...
"The update price for Release 4 is $800. Objectsupport customers who
have licenses for which they have not purchased the annual update
option receive a 35% discount for those licenses, reducing the price
to $520. Licenses for which the annual update option has been purchased
will receive an update free of charge. Remember, even if you are entitled
to free updates, you must submit a completed update form.
"Release 4 has the same memory requirements as version 2.5..."
Ship dates: Nov '90 Mac, Sun-3, SPARCstation, DECstation
1Q '91 Objectkit, '386/Windows 3.0, IBM Sys/6000,
HP 9000 series 300 & 400, Apollo 2500, 3500 & 4500
It appears that Ow\St will use the Mac OS on Mac, MS-Windows 3.0 on '386,
and X Windows on all unix platforms.
Hope this was informative!
Disclaimer: My only connection to PPS is as a (usually) satisfied customer.
Direct queries/flames to info@parcplace.com or ...!uunet!parcplace!info
Rick Cameron ...{uunet, ubc-cs}!van-bc!mdivax1!cameron
Mobile Data Intl voice: +1 604 277 1511
Vancouver, BC fax: +1 604 277 2178andrew@computing-maths.cardiff.ac.uk (Andrew Jones) (03/16/91)
As an ancient Smalltalk user (that is, the Smalltalk is ancient, not me!) I would be very grateful if some kind Objectworks \ Smalltalk Release 4 user could answer the following questions: How does it handle processes? Does it rely entirely upon processes of the underlying platform, or does it define its own process and process scheduling mechanisms? If the latter, what purpose do these Smalltalk processes serve? Any help would be gladly received. I shall summarise the answers (briefly, unless requested otherwise). Andrew.