Newsgroups: comp.lang.dylan
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From: gleep@netcom.com (Net Bopper)
Subject: Dylan: Word from Apple
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Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 16:33:25 GMT
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Here is the full text of a message posted to the Apple Developers mailing list.
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Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 10:52:43 -0700
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From: HARDING@applelink.apple.com (Harding, Pat)
To: Subscribers to <semper.fi@abs.apple.com>
Subject: Re: Dylan Update from Apple
X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0 -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas

Given the recent semper.fi traffic regarding Dylan, Apple's Developer
Products Group would like to provide a status report.
 
A team, including members of the Cambridge Lab, is actively working to define
the future of Apple Dylan.   These plans are still not firm enough for
full public disclosure, although DPG aims to disclose details soon.
 
As announced at WWDC, Apple Dylan will be made available as a technology
release by the end of 1995. This effort is on track, due to a tremendous
engineering effort by the team in Cambridge.  Concurrently, marketing is
defining the packaging, pricing and distribution.  The goals of this release
are the following:
 
o   Make Dylan, broadly available to Macintosh developers for experimentation
    and prototyping, thus building the necessary infrastructure for Dylan
    adoption.
 
o  Gain further feedback and insight from the developer community.
 
The Apple Dylan technology release will include these components:
 
-   Dylan compiler and runtime
-   Integrated development environment featuring incremental development and
    advanced configurable browsing and viewing of code
-   Dylan application framework
-   Dylan user-interface builder
-   Cross-language support allowing seamless access to existing C code and APIs
 
The technology release will be hosted on 68K-based Macintosh systems, and will
generate code for both the 680x0 and Power Macintosh systems. In addition to
PowerPC code generation, the release will feature greatly improved code
optimization (largely due to sealed classes), and significant bug fixes and
general cleanup.  It looks like the compile speed will improve as well.
 
Specific details regarding where and how to order the Apple Dylan technology
release will be announced on the Dylan mailing lists, the Dylan WWW page, and
through Apple's standard channels later this year.
 
As discussed during WWDC, this release will be made broadly available, but long
term support will be limited.  Based on strong customer feedback, we  concluded
that the current implementation doesn't meet critical requirements.   Since the
future success of Dylan depends on how widely it will be used by developers on
multiple platforms, our goal is a portable, licensable implementation, largely
written in Dylan itself. We will leverage our existing work significantly and
will leverage the other key players in the Dylan community:  CMU and Harlequin.
 
We will locate much of the future Dylan work here in Cupertino.  This will
assure that the Dylan development effort is in synch with other key
developments at Apple (e.g. Copland, OpenDoc, the OpenDoc Development
Framework, etc.) and that the whole Apple community, including management is in
close contact.  Apple is working hard to retain current Dylan team members, to
work on both Dylan and non-Dylan projects.
 
We are pleased to announce that we recently hired Patrick Beard, the individual
who ported CMU's Mindy byte-code Dylan compiler, and Marlais, CMU's Dylan
interpreter, to the Macintosh.  Patrick has implemented MacMindy as a drop-in
compiler for Symantec's 8.0 development environment; we look forward to having
this implementation broadly available very soon. We are also looking at the
Dylan framework and the User Interface Builder as key components of the future
Dylan product. We are evaluating compiler technologies, synergies between the
Dylan framework and other Apple frameworks and many other implementation issues
key to the final product. And last but not least we actively recruiting a
Product Marketing Manager for Dylan.
 
Apple is committed to Dylan as a technology but we still have many difficult
decisions to make as we go forward.  We will work to keep all of you informed
of our plans and progress.
 
 
Pat Harding                             Peter Christy
Senior Marketing Manager                Senior Director
Apple Developer Tools                   Apple Developer Products
 
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Additional sources of information about Dylan and future announcements
regarding its availability are:
 
    o   On the Internet, the Apple Dylan WWW (World-Wide Web) site is
        http://www.cambridge.apple.com. The Apple Dylan ftp site is
        cambridge.apple.com:/pub/dylan/
 
    o   On the Dylan WWW  page at Carnegie Mellon University is
        http://legend.gwydion.cs.cmu.edu:8001/dylan/
 
    o   On the Dylan newsgroup is comp.lang.dylan
 
    o   On Applelink, Dylan files are regularly uploaded to:
        Developer Support:Developer Services:
        Development Platforms:Dylan Related
