Newsbits

By John Kawakami, MacTech Magazine Editorial Assistant

Dylan Pre-release Ships

The Apple Dylan Technology Release is a development environment for the Macintosh platform based on an Object-Oriented Dynamic Language (OODL) called Dylan. The goal of this release is to provide developers with the opportunity to familiarize themselves with Dylan as a language as well as Apple Dylan as a development experience. It is being offered to encourage exploration of the Dylan language and environment.

This is a “Technology Release” because the software is unfinished. It contains a number of bugs, and will not be supported or updated through Apple’s standard technical support processes.

Applications under development can be run on any Macintosh and will run native on the PowerPC. The development environment itself runs best on a 68030 or 68040 based Macintosh with at least 20 megabytes of physical memory. For Power Macs, developers should turn off the Modern Memory Manager to run the development environment in emulation. Apple Dylan has been tested on MacOS versions 7.1 and 7.5.

The Apple Dylan Technology Release includes:

• Dylan compiler and runtime

• Integrated development environment featuring incremental development and advanced configurable browsing and viewing of code

• Dylan application framework

• Dylan user-interface builder

• Cross-language support allowing seamless access to existing C code and APIs

• Complete printed documentation

The Apple Dylan Technology Release is hosted on 68K-based Macintosh systems. However, you will be able to produce applications targeting both the 680x0 and Power Macintosh systems.

The development environment lets you create projects with all the advantages of a rapid-prototyping environment. Your project is stored in a database rather than in text files. Customizable browsers let you explore and edit your program from a number of perspectives. For example, you can browse class hierarchies graphically, find all callers of a given function, or find all the objects which reference a given object.

The incremental compiler allows you to change code in a running program and see the results immediately. This gives you freedom as a programmer to explore various options and rapidly improve your software.

The Dylan language is thoroughly object-oriented and contains a number of features which encourage abstraction, leading to cleaner, more maintainable code. Automatic memory management frees you from the burden of manually allocating, tracking, and deallocating memory usage in your application, saving you both programming and debugging time. The language’s consistency and familiar syntax ensure that it is easy to learn.

Apple is in active discussions with various partners exploring ways to enhance the technology release in the future. Any future versions of the technology release depend on the successful completion of those discussions.

Orders can be placed to APDA; use order # M4724Z/A. The price is $39.95. To order from North America, please call the appropriate toll-free number:

United States 1 (800) 282-2732

Canada 1 (800) 637-0029

Other international customers may order by contacting one of our licensed resellers in 30 countries, or by calling the following number:

International (716) 871-6555

Symantec Releases Java DevelopmentTools

Symantec Corporation announced it has licensed the Java Internet programming language technology from Sun Microsystems and released the first Java development environment for Windows 95 and NT, code named “Espresso”. Espresso is Symantec’s fully integrated development environment which seamlessly incorporates Sun’s Java Development Kit (JDK) for the creation of Java applets for Internet web pages. Espresso provides Java developers with class and project management capabilities within a graphical development environment.

Espresso parses the Java Source code on the fly and creates a repository of information about the Java applet and the Java class libraries. This provides a visual representation of the Java application class hierarchy, allowing the user to better understand the standard Java classes, as well as classes of the application. The Class Browser allows developers to browse the Java sources as well as giving them the ability to browse and edit methods, data, and classes. The Class Browser also allows developers to work with the object-oriented pieces of their Java program, as opposed to source files.

Espresso for the Power Macintosh development environment will follow in the first quarter of 1996.

http://sunweb.symantec.com:80/lit/dev/javaindex.html

Language Systems and Spyglass Merge
to Form Fortner Research

Language Systems, makers of LS FORTRAN and LS Object Pascal, have merged with Spyglass Inc., makers of advanced data visualization software, to form Fortner Research.

Brand Fortner, Ph.D., the Spyglass co-founder responsible for technical product marketing of its visual data analysis (VDA) tools, is charting the company’s course as chairman of Fortner Research. Joining him from Language Systems are Rich Norling, that company’s founder, and Guy McCarthy, who retains his titles as president and chief executive officer in the new company. Spyglass, Inc., elected to sell the visualization software to concentrate on developing communications products for the World Wide Web. The Language Systems product line includes LS FORTRAN and LS Object Pascal compilers, and Math 77, a cross-platform library for numerical computation.

The new company will maintain current pricing for both product lines. Fortner Research expects to introduce significant upgrades of existing products in 1996. In addition, it is actively investigating new data technologies emerging from the world of supercomputers. “We’re going to deliver new levels of performance and capability that exceed everything we have today,” McCarthy predicted.

LS Object Pascal, which recently became a drop-in compiler in the Symantec IDE, will continue to be supported and developed by Fortner Research.

Fortner Research LLC., 100 Carpenter Dr., Sterling, VA 20164. Phone: (703) 478-0181; fax: (703) 689-9535.

http://www.langsys.com/langsys/

info@fortner.com

It Takes Three to Tango
(Tango, Butler, WebSTAR)

EveryWare has begun shipping Tango, a full-featured visual development tool that integrates databases with Web servers. Tango lets Web administrators create Web pages that utilize databases without writing any SQL or HTML code.

Tango connects WebSTAR to EveryWare’s Butler SQL relational database server. An ODBC version of Butler is slated for release in January of ’96. Tango provides the tools allowing webmasters to create:

• electronic shopping malls

• product and pricing catalogs

• chat and conferencing systems

• event registration systems

• enhanced security systems

Tango’s approachable visual programming environment increases productivity and allows non-programmers to develop applications for the Web. Webmasters can focus on the graphical and layout elements of the solution while Tango handles the database elements. In addition to the standard editing environment, Tango also has Query Builders, which are like assistants or guides. They allow quick creation of search, insert, update and delete interfaces to the databases.

EveryWare Development Corp., 7145 West Credit Ave. Building 1, Ste. 2, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5N 6J7. Phone: (905) 819-1173; fax: (905) 819-1172; FirstClass BBS: (905) 819-9891.

http://www.everyware.com/

info@everyware.com

NetForms Advances Maxum’s Quest
to Make Your CGIs Obsolete

NetForms is an add-on application which runs on your MacHTTP WWW server. It allows forms entered by users of the server to be automatically converted to formatted HTML documents, which can then be read by other Web clients. In addition to these expected features, NetForms will automatically add links to specified strings (like your name) and automatically manage large lists of pointers to other documents. The price for a single server is $195, and the educational price for a single server is $95.

http://www.maxum.com/NetForms/

Objectivity Announces Objectivity/DB
Server for Macintosh

Objectivity, Inc. announced a Macintosh server for Objectivity/DB, the scalable, high-availability, high-performance object database built on a fully distributed architecture. The new Objectivity/DB server for Macintosh incorporates administrative tools with a native Macintosh look and feel, bringing Macintosh peer-to-peer server capabilities in a distributed network of object-oriented information servers.

“Macintosh usability combined with the robustness and scalability of Objectivity’s object database will make it easier for developers to build more sophisticated object-oriented applications, such as video-on-demand, for their customers,” said Mike Zivkovic, business development manager for Apple Computer’s Development Tools Group.

Objectivity/DB supports development language interfaces for C++ and ParcPlace Smalltalk, as well as ANSI-standard SQL with ODBC support for integrating applications with off-the-shelf tools. Objectivity/DB objects are interoperable between language interfaces - for example, an object created with C++ on one platform can be read, updated or deleted using Smalltalk on another platform.

The Objectivity/DB server for Macintosh will be available beginning in the first quarter of 1996. North American pricing for the Objectivity/DB server for Macintosh begins at $155 per single user.

Objectivity. In the US, phone: 415-254-7100; in Europe, phone: +31 1045 83986

http://www.objectivity.com

info@objy.com