Smalltalk MT

Smalltalk MT Visual Components features a visual interface builder, seamless support for ActiveX controls, as well as the ability to create ActiveX components in Smalltalk MT.

The graphical interface builder lets developers define the screen layout and advanced properties such as resizing parameters and event handling. The designer can drop ActiveX components onto a form, connect events, view properties and invoke methods interactively. The interface builder also generates and reloads resource files. A neat feature is the capability to reverse-engineer existing applications. The output is extremely compact and similar to what can be achieved with manual coding.

Additional libraries cover database access, a socket interface, ISAPI server extensions and CGI applications, a messaging interface, a communication library, and console (non-GUI applications) support. Smalltalk MT Visual Components does also exploit the new common controls library, supports many advanced GUI features such as dockable palettes, and comes with a new look and feel that makes the environment even more user friendly.

Read more about the Smalltalk MT development environment

Read about new features in version 5.6

Check out the ActiveX Demo

Socket Library

The Socket library gives you multithreaded access to Windows sockets. The associated example demonstrates different operating modes:

  • Blocking calls in separate threads.
  • WSA (asynchronous calls).

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ODBC Interface

The ODBC library lets you access databases via an ODBC driver. It currently implements ODBC level 1 & 2 and major level 3 functionality.

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Communication Library

COMMLIB implements communications via a FileStream subclass, CommStream. The communication API uses the File interface. Writing communication software is therefore relatively straightforward.

The Simple Terminal sample demonstrates the use of communication devices, device configuration, and multithreading issues. The program opens the following threads:
the main thread manages the user interface.

  • A background thread reads incoming data and raises an event whenever data is ready or an error occurred.
  • The user can send a text file. In this case, a background thread transmits the data and raises an event when the operation completes or an error occurs.
  • Any character entered by the user is directly sent to the device.

In addition, the program can also spawn a thread that waits on comm events and displays the events in the status bar.

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