Announcement: New Release of VA Smalltalk

[Mike Taylor]

August 29, 2011

Subject: New Release of VA Smalltalk™

We're very happy to announce the availability of Version 8.5 of VA
Smalltalk. This latest release is available now and includes a number
of powerful new capabilities and enhancements.

Customers with active support agreements can download the new version
for free at http://www.instantiations.com/products/vasmalltalk/download.html.

If you're not using VA Smalltalk you can try it by downloading our
free, fully functional Evaluation Version (same download site as
above).

An informative 2-page data sheet is available at
http://www.instantiations.com/products/vasmalltalk/index.html

What’s New in Version 8.5?

Development Tools
• Code Assist (auto-completion)
Infrastructure
• Log4s Logging Framework (based on log4j)
• Preference Settings Framework
• Deprecation Exception
Graphics and Windowing
• Windows Rebar Control
• TIFF CCITT T.4 bi-level encoding
Web Interface
• Seaside 3.0.5+ / Grease 1.0.5+
• HTTP Chunked Transfer Encoding
Support
• 60+ bug fixes and minor enhancements

VA Smalltalk...Onward and Upward!

[Narender Sharma]

Hi Mike,
            Does the "Code Assist (auto-completion)"  feature provides some kind of framework that I can use to create my custom auto completing text widgets ? I have not tried VA 8.5, so I am not sure of its capabilities.

Thanks!

[Seth Berman]

Hi,

There is a generic framework, VA Content Assist, that can be plugged into a CwText widget.  This was first released in 8.5, and I will say that the internals will be undergoing some changes for the next release, but the external API should remain stable.

You can load the VA Content Assist Examples to see how it works by running the VAContentAssistTextEditorExample class.

It needs to mature a little more as a general framework...right now it is designed to support the Sts Code Assist features.  I think by the end of next release it will be at that point and documentation for using the framework will be made available.

-- Seth

[Narender Sharma]

Thanks Seth, I am sure VAST users will like it a lot. Smalltalk is a great language and support of such framework and libraries will ensure that developers can be even more productive.

Thanks!