[Xotcl] XOTcl 0.84 Release

[Uwe Zdun]

Announcing XOTcl 0.84. 
**********************

WHAT IS XOTCL?

  XOTcl is object-oriented extension of Tcl that was derived from
  OTcl. In short, XOTcl tries to provide a highly flexible,
  reflective, component-based, and object-oriented environment. It
  integrates language support for high level concepts which are not
  found in other languages, with reasonable performance. It prevails
  the Tcl programming style and the dynamic/introspective nature of
  the language, rather than introducing other language's styles and
  rigidness (such as C++) into Tcl.

RECENT CHANGES IN VERSION 0.84
  The most important changes relative to 0.83 are:
  - Object recreation scheme (instead of destroying object on overwrites;
    the semantics of recreation can be configured now).
  - Enhanced destroy and create logic (much more customizable).
  - Heavily improved compilation support for Windows versions + full
    test suite running on Win with nmake.
  - Improved test suite.
  - XOTcl wrapper for various persistent stores, including Gdbm,
    Sdbm, TextFile, Mem. These are transparently used for object 
    persistence. 
  - All stores have a new interface resembling the interface 
    to (non-persistent) objects (e.g. set-method writes an entry
    into the persistent store, unset deletes it from there, etc.). 
  - New static and dynamic analyzer packages for @ metadata and
    self-documentation facility.
  - Hierarchical package naming, like xotcl::store::gdbm,
    xotcl::comm::httpAccess, ...
  - New package for serialization of workspace contents (either whole 
    workspace, or certain classes/objects) to Tcl file.
  - Moved callstack information (calledproc, callingproc,
    callingobject, etc.) into ``self'' command (WARNING: 
    potential incompatibility esp. for filters).
  - New callstack information ``self next''.
  - Search process for XOTcl packages improved (see ChangeLog file).
  - ::xotcl namespace for runtime information.
  - htmllib by Antti Salonen: HTML Builder for HTML documents.
  - XOTcl is now thread-savvy. It can be used in Tcl8.3.2+ with
    tclthread2.2+ extension w/o modifications. However, at the moment,
    interp memory is freed, when the thread exists, not when the
    interp is deleted (due to Tcl lacking a proper hook).
    If somebody needs assistance in bringing it to work with AOLserver
    3+, contact Zoran Vasiljevic <zoran@archiware.com>. 
  - Speedup for xotcl primitives bwtn. 5% (typically) and 55% (next)
  - Bug fixes & more documentation.

MORE INFO 
  General information about XOTcl and its components can be found at
  http://www.xotcl.org

  Mailing list: http://wi.wu-wien.ac.at/mailman/listinfo/xotcl

Best regards,

Gustaf Neumann
Uwe Zdun