Ambrai Smalltalk 1.0.7 Beta4 Release

Ottawa, Canada – October 2, 2005

Ambrai Smalltalk 1.0.7 Beta4 is now available for download.

Summary of changes:

  1. Networking
    • Tcp sockets and streams.
    • Udp sockets.
  2. Objective-C interface
    • Can return 64-bit integers.
    • Can browse structure fields in the inspector window.
    • Can pose classes.
    • Miscellaneous fixes related to delegates.
  3. Native interface
    • Can return structures from functions.
  4. Collections
    • The following SortedCollection methods now take O(log n) time:
      • occurrencesOf:
      • add:withOccurrences:
      • after:ifNone:
      • before:ifNone:
      • indexOf:ifAbsent:
      • nextIndexOf:from:to:
      • prevIndexOf:from:to:
      • includes:
    • ByteArray and String collect: methods can return a resulting collection with any kind of element.
  5. Miscellaneous
    • New byte streams.
    • New global application menu bar is used when all windows are closed or minimized or Cocoa window is active.
    • Added MAC (Message Authentication Code) algorithm type to Cryptography.
    • Added scaled decimal syntax, it is treated as float.
    • Fixed the Debug toolbar button to work when the selection has temporary variables.
    • Fixed the Escape key to work in dialogs.
    • The copy buffer is kept after Smalltalk quits.

Ambrai Smalltalk 1.0.6 Beta3 Release

Ottawa, Canada – April 1, 2005

Ambrai Smalltalk 1.0.6 Beta3 is now available for download.

Summary of changes:

  1. Objective-C interface improvements
    • Can load nib files and provide Smalltalk controller and delegate objects.
    • Can subclass arbitrary Objective-C classes.
    • Can use structures and floating point numbers as return and argument types.
    • Smalltalk caches Objective-C method signatures so native calls are noticeably faster.
  2. Command-line improvements
    • Smalltalk will wait for executed command line programs to complete before continuing. The exit code is returned.
  3. Syntax improvements
    • Smalltalk can have empty temporary variables declaration.
  4. Development environment improvements
    • Text files will be positioned at the top, not at the bottom, when opened with either FileEditorWindow or WorkspaceWindow.

Ambrai Smalltalk 1.0.5 Beta2 Release

Ottawa, Canada – December 15, 2004

Ambrai Smalltalk 1.0.5 Beta2 is now available for download.

Summary of changes:

  1. IDE improvements
    • Syntax highlighting
    • Syntax-based keyboard and mouse selection
    • Splitter panes
    • Text pane find and replace
    • Keyboard navigation
  2. Command-line
    • Can run /usr/bin/smalltalk from the Terminal
    • Can access command-line arguments
    • Can access environment variables
    • Can input and output to and from the command-line
    • Can invoke other command-line programs
    • Can pipe data to and from other command-line programs
  3. Unicode character support
    • Unicode characters can be used in the source code. Comments, string, symbol, and character literals may contain international characters. Method selectors must still use traditional unaccented Latin characters.
    • Unicode character escape sequences may be used in string and symbol literals.
    • All GUI components may contain international characters.
    • UTF8 and UTF16 text encodings are supported.
  4. Object finalization
  5. Objective-C interface
  6. Database interface
  7. Cryptographic framework
  8. Graphics framework
  9. Weak collection improvements
  10. Squeak file compatibility
    • Can file-in Ambrai chunk format into Squeak.
    • Can file-in Squeak chunk format into Ambrai (assignment _ must be manually changed to :=).

Ambrai Smalltalk 1.0 Beta1 Release

Ottawa, Canada – April 28, 2004

Ambrai Inc. is pleased to announce the beta release of Ambrai Smalltalk, a new Smalltalk development environment for Mac OS X.

Ambrai Smalltalk features a complete suite of native development tools that tightly integrate with the Mac OS Desktop. Currently these tools include package, class, category browsers, debugger, inspectors, and workspaces. Ambrai Smalltalk can be used to deploy Mac OS standard or console applications.

"We aim to deliver a rapid application development platform suitable to create new or script existing Mac OS applications. Whether you are a seasoned programmer or have never written a single line of Smalltalk code, we hope you will consider Ambrai Smalltalk for your next project." -- Ambrai Smalltalk Development Team.

Founded in 2003, Ambrai Inc. is a privately held company based in Ottawa, Canada. Please visit http://www.ambrai.com to find more details and to download Ambrai Smalltalk.