Thanks Chris.
- An interface to the operating system stdio.
Oops, this is only in Cog only at this point. I opened Mantis 7591 "Add #primitiveFileStdioHandles to standard VM" to follow up on it (but not today - happy holidays everyone :).
Dave
On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 05:32:13PM -0600, Chris Muller wrote:
After reviewing every new package version since 4.1, I came up with the following for release notes for 4.2. There were, literally, dozens of little enhancements, fixes and performance improvements which I simply decided to summarize under:
"- Many enhancements, fixes, documentation and performance improvements to the class-library and IDE tools."
The remaining items either weren't an enhancment, fix, doc of perf, or otherwise seemed worth mentioning individually.
I've put as much time as I can afford into this one, but it could use your help in touching these up. Please add any _major_ (not minor, please) items I may have missed. Please improve wording of items that need it; for example: "- Finalization enhancements.".
Please make final changes on the wiki page:
http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6160rather than replying here, since that would leave the updates fragmented among multiple e-mails.
What we end up with on the wiki page is what we will use for the release.
Thanks you! Chris
Squeak 4.2 Release Notes
- Compatible with the new Cog VM which provides roughly a 3X,
across-the-board, performance improvement.
- Compatible with signature Squeak packages.
- Many enhancements, fixes, documentation and performance improvements
to the class-library and IDE tools.
- Improved package-dependencies.
- A new number parser allows greater flexibility in the expression of numbers.
- Finalization enhancements.
- Support for caching of block computations, without need for the
developer to declare a variable. ^[time-consuming computation] once
- An interface to the operating system stdio.
- Stricter Rectangles assert screen coordinate orientation. Empty
Rectangles no longer #intersect: anything.
- A tidier image and code-base. Introduced a cleanUp protocol,
removed the last direct users of CrLfFileStream, j3 support, SyntaxError, and more. Various packages and fonts can now be unloaded, if a smaller image is desired.
- Replaced the last of the underscore assignments with ANSI assignments.
- A refactoring and unification of Smalltalk and SmalltalkImage globals.
- Support for translucent fonts.
- Squeak's internal timer clock has been improved from millisecond to
microsecond level precision.
- Many enhancements to the internal text editor.
- Added an efficient window-resizing gesture, allowing Squeak windows
to be quickly and easily manipulated.
- A new HelpSystem and Help menu guide new users.
- Restored support for MVC projects.
- SUnit tests now may timeout.
- Improved Squeak's command-line interface to properly support
relative-path qualification to the input script.