Dear XOTcl Community,
XOTcl 1.6.0 is available. This release provides in short: - orthogonality improvements for introspection, - more introspection methods (one can now e.g. query, into which classes a mixin class is mixed into) and - performance improvements (some methods are significantly faster. e.g. by a factor of 1000 for larger systems).
In addition, the XOTcl source code follows now closer the Tcl source code guidelines (e.g. variable naming), a few potential crashes have been fixed.
See below for more details. Best regards
-gustaf neumann
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Announcing XOTcl 1.6.0 *************************
We are pleased to announce the availability of XOTcl 1.6.0.
Major changes relative to 1.5.6 are:
* Provide a uniform interface to the following info subcommands
<class> info superclass ?-closure? ?pattern? <class> info subclass ?-closure? ?pattern? <class> info instances ?-closure? ?pattern? <class> info instmixin ?-closure? ?pattern?
The new option "-closure" returns the transitive set of the relation (e.g. .. info subclass -closure) returns the subclasses and the subclasses of the subclasses. For "info instances -closure" the instances of the subclasses are returned as well. For more details, please see the language reference manual.
In cases, where a pattern is specified, and the pattern contains meta-characters, a list of results is returned matching the pattern (like "string match"). When no matching value is found, an empty list is returned.
In cases, where a pattern is specified, and the pattern contains no meta-characters, a single value is returned corresponding to the specified value. The pattern is used to lookup an object or class, such it is not necessary to provide fully qualified names). if there is no match, empty is returned. Previously, "info superclass" and "info subclass" returned a boolean value and performed always a transitive search. Returning "" is more consistent and more in line with Tcl.
Note that "<class> info superclass -closure" is a replacement for "<class> info heritage", and "<class> info instances -closure" is a replacement for "<class> allinstances". The old commands will be marked as deprecated in the near future.
Please note, that the behavior of the match pattern has changed and is therefor not completely compatible with prior versions.
* New info subcommands:
<class> info instmixinof ?-closure? ?pattern? <class> info mixinof ?pattern?
These info subcommands are used to determine, into which classes a mixin class was mixed into.
These inverse functions of mixin and instmixin are used as well internally. These functions help to speed certain operations (e.g. superclass, or registering a mixin class) up by a factor of 1000 (!) or more, when a large number of objects exist.
This functionality was primarily implemented by Martin Matuska. Many thanks!
* Made the behavior "pattern" in the following calls identical concerning wild cards and object lookups
<object> mixin delete pattern <class> instmixin delete pattern <class> superclass delete pattern <object> info mixin ?pattern?
* Fix to preserve var traces when copying objects (Many thanks to Florian Murr for reporting)
* Fix problem in Tcl 8.5.* when setting variables from C (problem with Tcl_ObjSetVar2()?); many thanks to Florian Murr and Neophytos Demetriou for reporting)
* Improved documentation
* Extended regression tests
For more details about the changes, please consult the ChangeLog and documentation.
MORE INFO General and more detailed information about XOTcl and its components can be found at http://www.xotcl.org