[Help-smalltalk] GNU Smalltalk 2.2a release announcement

[Paolo Bonzini]

I got mistaken last week and this is 9 years I've been working on GNU 
Smalltalk, not 10.  I guess I'll have to hand back the party hat for 
another 11 months.

Now, the serious part.

GNU Smalltalk 2.2a is a release candidate for 2.3.  There were many 
additions to 2.2 that are relatively important and incompatible 
(image-wise) with 2.2, that justify the new release number.  The release 
can be found at ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/smalltalk/smalltalk-2.2a.tar.gz

I would like to thank the people on address@hidden for the 
renewed vitality of the list, which ultimately spurred me to find new 
interest in GNU Smalltalk, and to do all the work leading to this release.

The changes from 2.2 are as follows:

NEWS FROM 2.2 TO 2.2a

* FileStreams can now use pwrite for more efficient operation on files 
opened for read/write, and will do many less gratuitous lseek 
operations.  pread will also be used by FileStream>>#copyFrom:to:. The 
number of system calls issued when generating the documentation, for 
example, is reduced by a third.

* Fixed bug in methods containing both -0.0 and 0.0 (positive and 
negative floating-point zero).

* Fixed bug in Directory class>>#create:, that could not create a 
directory relative to the current directory.

* Fixed bug in File>>#touch, which did not work really.  There are also 
methods to modify a file's atime and mtime.

* Fixed bug in SortedCollection.  After #removeAtIndex:, adds would 
leave the collection unordered.

* Introduced a method to efficiently convert a WriteStream into a 
ReadStream. It is called #readStream and makes WriteStream more 
polymorphic with ReadStream.

* Introduced another class shape, #character, that can be used for String.

* More reliable detection of at-end-of-file condition for pipes, TTYs, 
and so on (especially on Mac OS X).

* Moved gdk_draw_ functions to GdkDrawable.

* New goodie to parse the command line.  Look at the documentation for 
the Getopt class and for SystemDictionary>>#arguments:do:.

* New example, lazy callections.  When loaded, #select:, #reject: and 
#collect: do not create a new collection unless necessary.  Idioms like

        (a select: [ :each | ... ]) do: [ : each | ... ]

or

        a := a select: [ :each | ... ].
        a := a reject: [ :each | ... ].
        a := a select: [ :each | ... ].
        ^a size

can be much faster when this example is loaded.

* Regular expressions are now included in the default image.  The 
interface is now definitive and is similar to 2.2.  The concrete classes 
for RegexResults are in a private namespace (since the user need not 
instantiate them anyway).  Right now, regular expressions are only 
usable for String objects (see Unicode support below).  This may change 
in the future.

* The backtraces now omit again the internal methods in the exception 
handling system.

* The class above which super-send bytecodes start searching is now 
embedded in the bytecode stream.  This provides the infrastructure to 
implement 'here' in Smalltalk/X (not implemented) or 'self.Foo b' to 
execute the Foo>>#b method (also not implemented).

* Various speedups.


Unicode support:

* Characters above 127 are no longer used to represent extended ASCII 
characters.  Instead, they are only used to represent a byte in the 
encoding of the Unicode characters from 128 on.  To create them use the 
Blue Book method Character class>>#value:.

To represent Unicode characters above 127 use the (ANSI Smalltalk) 
Character class>>#codePoint: method, or the new syntax $<13> which 
allows to express characters using their Unicode code point.  The new 
syntax will create instances of the new UnicodeCharacter class when the 
number is > 127.

Note that these characters *cannot* be shown on a stream with #nextPut: 
(use #display: instead) nor compared with #== (use #= instead). 
Character constants like $+ or $A are guaranteed to create normal 
"Character" objects, for which you can safely use #nextPut:.

* New UnicodeCharacter and UnicodeString classes.  These new classes can 
also be passed to and received from C functions.  See the manual for 
more information.

* Part of the I18N module was separated into the Iconv module, which 
provides support for printing Unicode characters and strings correctly.


Have fun, and report bugs.

Paolo