Larry
"Larry Newman" <
[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:8t3vhf$idh$
[hidden email]...
> Could somebody introduce Dolphin Smalltalk as a newsgroup, giving a
> reference URL, current version and platform, differences/enhancements from
> Smalltalk-80, Squeak, or Visual Works, if there are free versions, what
> platform-specific extensions are there that are useful (I noticed
something
> about VARIANTS in a post, and I know THAT's not from Xerox). Any subset
of
> the above? I'm specially interested/worried about syntactic enhancements
to
> the language. Thanks.
CHARTER: comp.lang.smalltalk.dolphin
comp.lang.smalltalk.dolphin is intended to be for the general or technical
discussion of the Dolphin Smalltalk variant of the Smalltalk language.
Suitable topics include those that are specific to the use of Dolphin
although more general Smalltalk questions will also be welcomed from
programmers who are working within the Dolphin environment. Advocacy
discussions, such as why this particular implementation of Smalltalk is
better that another, or why Smalltalk is better/worse than other
programming languages are not considered appropriate within this forum.
In line with common policy for non-binary newsgroups, the posting of large
binary files is not permitted.
END CHARTER.
A reference URL is:
http://www.object-arts.com/DolphinSmalltalk.htmDolphin is a version of Smalltalk that specifically targets Windows (more
specifically Win32). It employs native widgets, and is tightly integrated
with the platform (although the vast majority of such code is implemented in
Smalltalk, in the image) - this bequeaths it a responsive UI which looks
good and which behaves consistently with what Windows users expect. It
introduces a new Model-View-Presenter (MVP) user-interface framework to
Smalltalk that some regard as superior to previous Smalltalk user-interface
frameworks. It is, though, true to the heritage of Smalltalk-80 and adds no
new syntax (other than the ##() compile-time-evaluated-expression construct
first introduced in IBM Smalltalk), i.e. Dolphin's platform specific
extensions are achieved through the class library rather than language
extensions.
The current version is 3.06 (patch level 5), which will shortly be replaced
by version 4 which is currently in beta testing.
There is a free version, 2.1, available from
http://www.object-arts.com/Downloads/2.1/Downloads.htm#FreeDolphin. This
version bears fairly little resemblance to even 3.06, but is nevertheless it
is quite usable, and is very lean and small.
The discussion of VARIANTs arises because Dolphin (as a Windows Smalltalk)
has strong COM/Active-X support, and this will be further improved in
version 4, which can host visual Active-X controls (OCXs).
Regards
Blair McGlashan
Object Arts Ltd
Locked
