D6 Beta 2 Available

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D6 Beta 2 Available

Andy Bower-3
Folks,

Finally, we've been able to release Beta 2. You can download the
installer from the usual location on the website:

http://www.object-arts.co.uk/navigation/downloads/DolphinX6.html

Your existing serial number should work to unlock the image. Check the
release notes for the changes in this version compared with Beta 1 but
here's a brief run through of the highlights:

1) STS integration. Following the announcement that we've been able to
license David Gorisek's Source Tracking System, we have now integrated
this into the base Dolphin Professional image.

We'd like existing STS users to check this out to make sure it
functions as expected. To be fair, David haven't yet seen the
integrated code so there may be problems. Please report these in the
usual way, by entering a bug report and posting a message here.

We'd also be interested in hearing from other users if there are any
other (straightforward) enhancements you think can be made to the STS
integration before the release.

Please note that David is planning to implement an Admin facility for
STS to allow the easily opening and backup of repositories.

2) Help integration. The help/documentation is a big task and is not
yet complete. However, this release has the first showing of what we
have done so far. There's a lot of stuff that's not yet ready, so it's
probably easier if I tell you what is there, rather than what's not.

Please check out the following areas:

(a) "What's This" Shift+F1 help is now available for all the icons in
the System Folder and for all of the panes in the Class and System
Browsers. This will obviously be extended to all of the tools before
the release.

(b) Standard context F1 help is available for the System Folder,
Workspace and the Class and System browsers. Obviously, this will be
completed for the other tools.

(c) The Welcome workspace has now been replaced by a specialised help
window. Since we have adopted Scintilla for the workspaces they can no
longer display rich text so the welcome window, which should be one of
the first things a new user sees, looked a bit "flat". We think that
the new Help/First Splash experiments make this look a lot better.

(d) The Tip of the Day has also been replaced by a series of pop-up
help Windows. As before, this is accessible from the Help menu and also
at image startup. The new pop-ups seem, to me at least, to be less
intrusive and I found that I can actually live with them turned on now,
which I could never do before.

(e) The Help/What's New documentation is complete and the Help/Guided
Tour is complete for the System Folder, Workspace, Class Browser and
System Browser.

(f) The Getting Started section is complete.

Most of the other stuff in the help file is not ready and is in a state
of flux so don't pay too much attention to that for the moment.
Completing the documentation is the major thrust left before release
(at least we hope it is).

3) Go Search. We've implemented a rather cool search bar in all of the
Dolphin tools. Why not use the Shift+F1 help to find out what it does?

4) Somewhat hidden away is the introduction of the ToolbarIconButton.
This allows toolbars to be built out of buttons that make use of icons
rather than those horrid mini-bitmaps. Most of the toolbars in the
development system are now implemented in this way, so take a look to
see how it's done. There are a couple of reasons why this seemed to be
a good idea:

(a) If you have a button that launches a presenter then it's likely
that you already have an icon for this and you don't really want to
draw another bitmap just for the toolbar button. This was certainly the
case with the development system.

(b) Another cool reason, which we haven't really made use of yet, is
that the toolbars can now easily be resized to have larger buttons.
There's no need to redraw the bitmaps because the icons will just yield
up the appropriate size images.

I think we are starting to see the "light at the end of the tunnel",
and it is our hope that we can release D6 early in November (perhaps as
soon as the 7th). Depending on the response from this beta, we believe
that most of the remaining work will be in completing the documentation.

Basically, we intend to get all the "user" documentation complete and
then do as much of the "developer" documentation as time allows before
the release date. we can always update the latter at some point in the
not too distant future.

I hope you enjoy the new version.

Best Regards,

--
Andy Bower
Dolphin Support
www.object-arts.com


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Re: D6 Beta 2 Available

Andy Bower-3
Folks,

> Here's a brief run through of the highlights:

Sorry, I forgot to mention one last thing.

5) Dolphin Community Edition is now included in the Fresh Install
image. Depending on what type of serial number you enter, you will
either get a Dolphin Professional or a Dolphin Community Edition being
unlocked.

We'd like you to try this out so here is a DCE serial number:

1RWRTUN-SJ7RS2H-6NEGZN7-N867MH

Best Regards,

--
Andy Bower
Dolphin Support
www.object-arts.com


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Re: D6 Beta 2 Available

Ian Bartholomew-20
In reply to this post by Andy Bower-3
Andy,

> I think we are starting to see the "light at the end of the tunnel",
> and it is our hope that we can release D6 early in November (perhaps as
> soon as the 7th). Depending on the response from this beta, we believe
> that most of the remaining work will be in completing the documentation.

Beta 2 expires 1/11/2005 - was that intentional?

Ian


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Re: D6 Beta 2 Available

Andy Bower-3
Ian,

> > I think we are starting to see the "light at the end of the tunnel",
> > and it is our hope that we can release D6 early in November
> > (perhaps as soon as the 7th). Depending on the response from this
> > beta, we believe that most of the remaining work will be in
> > completing the documentation.
>
> Beta 2 expires 1/11/2005 - was that intentional?

No, merely coincidence. In fact, I think I picked a date that was so
far ahead we couldn't possibly still be running the beta at that point
;-)

Assuming things go to plan and the November 7th date seems achievable,
then we probably won't send out any more beta keys but, rather, open up
the Web store earlier for those beta testers who want to upgrade.

best regards,

--
Andy Bower
Dolphin Support
www.object-arts.com


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Re: D6 Beta 2 Available

Steve Alan Waring
Hi Andy,

> Assuming things go to plan and the November 7th date seems achievable,
> then we probably won't send out any more beta keys but, rather, open up
> the Web store earlier for those beta testers who want to upgrade.

Any chance you could open the web store now? I need to rebuild an image, and
it would be handy to have a non expiring key.

Thanks,
Steve
--
Steve Waring
[hidden email]


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Re: D6 Beta 2 Available

Sean Malloy-11
In reply to this post by Andy Bower-3
On beta 2 I say: God damn.

Awesome.


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Re: D6 Beta 2 Available

Andy Bower-3
In reply to this post by Andy Bower-3
Folks,

Sorry about this. Following Udo's earlier reports I found there were
some pretty significant problems in the STS browsers. I think these
have been fixed now so I've rushed through another release which is now
up at the website.

We didn't have time to change the real version number, which still
remains at 6.0.2 but you can check you have downloaded the latest copy
because the installer will announce itself as 2005.6.0.2 (Beta 2a).

Maybe this one will last slightly longer :-)

--
Andy Bower
Dolphin Support
www.object-arts.com


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Re: D6 Beta 2 Available

Andy Bower-3
In reply to this post by Steve Alan Waring
Steve,

> Any chance you could open the web store now? I need to rebuild an
> image, and it would be handy to have a non expiring key.

I'm sure we can work something out for you within the next week. The
main difficulty is that we haven't yet set the final price for the full
version or the upgrade.

Best regards,

--
Andy Bower
Dolphin Support
www.object-arts.com


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Re: D6 Beta 2 Available

Schwab,Wilhelm K
Andy,

> I'm sure we can work something out for you within the next week. The
> main difficulty is that we haven't yet set the final price for the full
> version or the upgrade.

Just a thought: you could always change your mind before GA, making the
potentially lower (hopefully not higher!!<g>) price available to those
testers who fork over early???  Please understand that I am not trying
to beat a discount out of you; I am simply pointing out that you _can_
sell early to us if you wish.  It's that, extend the keys, or have us
pester you for one or the other :)

Have a good one,

Bill

--
Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
[hidden email]


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Re: D6 Beta 2 Available

Steve Messamore
In reply to this post by Sean Malloy-11
I agree on this one, youve done a tremendous job here! :)
"Sean Malloy" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
> On beta 2 I say: God damn.
>
> Awesome.
>


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Re: D6 Beta 2 Available

Sean Malloy-11
In reply to this post by Andy Bower-3
> 5) Dolphin Community Edition is now included in the Fresh Install
> image. Depending on what type of serial number you enter, you will
> either get a Dolphin Professional or a Dolphin Community Edition being
> unlocked.
>
> We'd like you to try this out so here is a DCE serial number:
>
> 1RWRTUN-SJ7RS2H-6NEGZN7-N867MH

Playing with Community Edition.. So far:

Idea Space toolbar icon is enabled and clicking on it produces a walkback.

Protocol Browser icon is enabled and shows a blank shell view when clicked

Opening any tool, closing it, and opening the tool again results in Zombie
warnings. Some exception are: Class Browser, Preferences, TestRunner, Active
X Tools*, Flipper Inspector, Pool Dictionaries, Live Update. Maybe some
others..

Double clicking a clas in the Package Browser results in a walkback because
#browseClass is missing.

The SmalltalkSystem singleton reports itself to be a
ProfessionalSmalltalkSystem. Odd!

That is all for now


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Re: D6 Beta 2 Available

Sean Malloy-11
> The SmalltalkSystem singleton reports itself to be a
> ProfessionalSmalltalkSystem. Odd!
>
> That is all for now


Also in the class browser, the variables context menu is greyed out. You
can't add variables to a class (You can still add them by changing the class
def though)