Folks -

After a nice batch of new stuff over the last two weeks, I've uploaded a fully updated trunk image to:

http://ftp.squeak.org/trunk/Squeak3.10.2-Trunk-091128.zip

Below the summary of this version.

Cheers, - Andreas

This is a list of the main achievements that went into the trunk image. The list is in reverse chronological order, newest additions on the top:

[------------------------- updated 11/28/09 ---------------------------]

Menu Bar -------- Squeak now has a standard menu bar to make it easier to discover its contents for new users, replacing the World menu as the prime source for launching tools and other activities.

Compiler -------- Support for literal ByteArray syntax has been added. Byte arrays can now be written as #[1 2 3 "..."] instead of #(1 2 3) asByteArray avoiding the need for conversion and a more compact default representation.

Numbers ------- Some prime related changed: Integer>>isPrime is now a deterministic test, Integer>>isProbablyPrime a probabilistic variant. Intger>>highBit and Integer>>lowBit have been sped up significantly.

CRLF Handling ------------- CR and LF are now treated interchangeably in rendering. Both cause a line break and both are not displayed. Various line related methods have been updated to deal with both CR and LF.

Collections ----------- Dictionary is no longer a subclass of Set. HashedCollection is the new superclass for both Set and Dictionary. Conversion of OrderedCollection and SortedCollection to Arrays has been sped up significantly.

[------------------------- updated 11/14/09 ---------------------------]

Kernel ------ Support for isolation layers has been retired. "self-evaluation" as a concept has been removed since every object can be forced to be self-evaluating by asking for its storeString.

Projects -------- Project refactoring are an ongoing process. Project itself has been split into Project / MVCProject / MorphicProject such that Project itself is abstract and various requests are handled properly in the subclasses.

Collections ----------- Several improvements have been added to Collections. Sets have become faster, Arrays now print in brace form by default, Dictionary>>keys return an array instead of a set.

Monticello ---------- Various load-order issues have been fixed within Monticello, making loading of packages more robust. Monticello and PackageInfo have been sped up in several areas making browsing of large repositories significantly faster.

Faster UTF-8 Conversions ------------------------ Generalize trick from ByteString>>#squeakToUtf8 to every converter using class instance variables. Dramatically improves performance of file operations.

FaceLift -------- An adaptation of Newspeak's Facelift look has been added to Squeak under the code name of "Botox" (meaning a small set of carefully chosen injections to improve the out of the box look for Squeak).

Shout ----- Shout (Syntax Hightlighting As You Type) has been added to this image. As with all new additions, it can be easily unloaded for people wanting smaller images.

ToolBuilder conversion ---------------------- All the tools have been given a make-over, removing pretty much all of the interface construction code and replacing it by ToolBuilder specs. This removes a huge amount of dependencies between the tools and particular UI frameworks, and puts all the UIs on equal footing (there were several tools that were either not all or only partially supported in MVC before).

New Text Editors ---------------- A complete new set of text editors (Editor, TextEditor and SmalltalkEditor) are available. They replace TextMorphEditor and break one of the last hard links between Morphic and MVC. With the new editors it will finally become possible to have Morphic be self-contained without the need to rely on portions of MVC.

Morphic Text Improvements ------------------------- Morphic has now regular blinking insertion point cursors instead of the (virtually invisible) static cursor previously. In addition, various problems with mixing fonts and the heights of text have been fixed.

Preference Pragmas ------------------ Preference pragmas simplify dealing with preferences by providing automatic discovery for preferences defined in your classes. No more littering Preferences; you can now define preferences local to your class and store the values in regular class variables. The preference gets automatically discovered by using the preference:category:description:type: pragma.

Beautiful, Anti-Aliased Fonts ----------------------------- We have a new set of beautiful anti-aliased Deja Vu bitmap fonts in this image. The default sizes include 7pt (for handheld devices), 9pt (generic text, list and menu fonts) as well as 12pt (window and title fonts): Deja Vu 7pt: Regular, Bold, Italics Deja Vu 9pt: Regular, Bold, Italics Deja Vu 12pt: Regular, Bold, Italics

Russian Language Support ------------------------ To input text in Russian language, install a font supporting the Cyrillic alphabet, then switch the locale accordingly:

TTFileDescription installFamilyNamed: 'Arial'. Locale switchToID: (LocaleID isoLanguage: 'ru').

This will enable Russian text input, display and processing.

Improved Truetype Support ------------------------- The new TTFileDescription works just like TTFontDescription but operates on the files directly on disk. This helps greatly to support the m17n efforts since we no longer load all the fonts into memory. To use the available fonts on your platform, select some text, hit Cmd-k (Alt-k) and select "More (non-portable) fonts".

Full Closure Support -------------------- This is a closure converted image. With full closure support, you can finally use recursive blocks like here:

fac := [:n| n > 1 ifTrue:[n * (fac value: n-1)] ifFalse:[1]]. fac value: 5.

and close over temps correctly, such as here:

(1 to: 10) do:[:i| WorldState addDeferredUIMessage:[Transcript cr; show: i]].

A new Development Model ----------------------- This image is being developed using a new development model described at

http://board.squeak.org/2009/07/02/a-new-community-development-model/

The image itself started as Squeak3.10.2-7179-basic.image. It was then updated from http://source.squeak.org/trunk. In order to keep track of ongoing development, simply hit the 'Load Code Updates' button.