Dolphin Technologies Inc. Announces Dolphin Kit Object Library Release 3.22 For NEXTSTEP Contact: Dolphin Technologies Inc. 10329 Viretta Lane Beverly Glen, CA 90077-2723 800-843-0328 310-441-9021 (outside US) Zacharias J. Beckman April 20, 1994 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA--Dolphin Technologies Inc. announced the availability of the Dolphin Kit class library, version 3.22, for NEXTSTEP (both Intel and Motorola hardware). This upgrade to the Dolphin Kit library adds a number of new features and objects to the kit. The kit now contains over 28 objects and protocols which are common to most applications built today. Kit container classes such as the DSArray, DSNodeTree and DSSortedList have been greatly enhanced. These classes now integrate directly with NEXTSTEP objects such as the NXBrowser and DBTableView. The DSThread and DSProcess classes have been enhanced to fully support multithreading with this release. The kit now provides complete facilities to create, manage and coordinate multiple threads of execution at the object level. String handling capabilities have been tremendously improved. The kit's string handling classes now support record management features. Regular expressions or constants are used to specify record delimiters. This capability make stream and text processing very easy when using the kit objects. Included in this new release is crash handling technology which will greatly aid in locating and fixing bugs. Crash handling is dealt with by automatically writing a backtrace to the console and, optionally, sending electronic mail with a copy of the backtrace to a specified address. This is particularly useful for situations in which an application crashes at a client site. It provides a rapid reporting mechanism to obtain information which is normally lost, and aids in reproducing problems which application users are often unable to recreate. The kit consists of a set of classes which run in the NEXTSTEP environment and provide common functionality that many applications require. The classes expand upon the existing NEXTSTEP API and deliver a proven set of software components to accelerate both in-house and mission critical software development. Dolphin Kit provides NEXTSTEP developers with an essential suite of classes from which to build applications. Included in the kit are classes for string manipulation, complex string parsing and regular expression handling, encapsulation of files, multitasking and management of C Threads at an object oriented level, handling Mach processes, containers such as sorted lists, arrays and tree classes, objects which directly generate and deliver NEXTMAIL, extended error and crash handling, and encapsulation of NXStreams. Dolphin Kit has been carefully architectured to provide a maximum of reusability and integration with existing NEXTSTEP classes. For example, kit data stores, such as the dynamic array class DSArray, integrate completely with the NEXTSTEP API by using the DBTableView class as a "front end" to display the container's contents. "In designing Dolphin Kit we made sure that the method names, parameter names and paradigms conformed to existing NEXTSTEP standards in the Application Kit, Database Kit, and Indexing Kit," said Carlos Salinas, Senior Engineer, Dolphin Technologies Inc. "Dolphin heavily leverages the kit in-house, both for our shrink wrap product development and our mission critical contracts," said Zacharias J. Beckman, Principal, Dolphin Technologies Inc. "The classes provide us with a proven and robust suite of objects which speed our development cycle tremendously. This allows us to focus on the important aspects of the project, rather than on recreating frequently used software components." Dolphin Kit is an integral part of Dolphin Technologies' development efforts, having been used in Dolphin's shrink wrap products such as Tar Viewer, an extension to the File Viewer that makes it possible to browse a "tar" file, and Author! Author!, NEXTSTEP's premier shrink wrap document management solution. Dolphin Technologies has also used the kit within its mission critical development contracts, where it greatly speeds development and rollout of the project. Dolphin Kit is available for a single-user license purchase price of $449.00 US (site licenses and source code licenses are available). For detailed information on the kit, send electronic mail to or contact Dolphin Technologies Inc. at 10329 Viretta Lane, Beverly Glen, CA 90077-2723. Dolphin Technologies Inc. and Dolphin Software are headquartered in Beverly Glen, California. The company performs systems engineering, mission critical development, and object oriented consulting services, and develops shrink wrap NEXTSTEP applications. For additional information contact Dolphin Technologies Inc. at 800-843-0328. -- END -- Author! Author! is a trademark of Dolphin Technologies Inc. NEXTSTEP is a trademark of NeXT Computer Inc.