home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Path: news.mel.aone.net.au!OzEmail!usenet
- From: Chris Colman <stepsoft@ozemail.com.au>
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.java,comp.lang.c++
- Subject: JAVelin: Slick JAVA graphical OO tool
- Date: Thu, 07 Mar 1996 07:59:15 +1000
- Organization: Step Ahead Software
- Message-ID: <313E0AB3.6288@ozemail.com.au>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: slsyd4p54.ozemail.com.au
- Mime-Version: 1.0
- Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
- Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
- X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.0 (Win95; I)
-
- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
-
- JAVelin: WorldÆs first graphical development environment for JAVA.
-
- Sydney, Australia: Step Ahead Software, developers of the
- internationally successful Visual Classworks graphical object oriented
- development tool for C++ developers released their JAVA development
- environment, JAVelin on Wednesday 6 March. A time limited evaluation
- version is available from http://www.ozemail.com.au/~stepsoft.
-
- JAVelin is the worldÆs first graphical object oriented development tool
- for JAVA. Creating new classes is as simple as a right click on the
- mouse and entering the name of the class. Classes are represented in a
- slick, graphical design window as icons. Class fields (or data) and
- methods can be easily created and modified all from within the design
- window. Drag and drop inheritence makes extending the features of one
- class in another very straightforward. Step Ahead SoftwareÆs legendary
- ôInSyncö code generation works in the background, automatically
- manipulating the underlying class source files to reflect the changes
- made by the user as they drive the graphical user interface. With
- JAVelin, users never have to worry about dealing directly with the
- underlying text files. Their focus can remain on the essence of object
- oriented programming - designing, implementing and refining classes,
- fields and their methods.
-
- Chris Colman, the technical director of Step Ahead Software says, ôThe
- JAVelin tool basically says to developers, ôThis is the nineties, JAVA
- is a 90Æs language, why should you be focussed on opening, editing and
- closing an unruly bunch of text files when the 90Æs focus is on
- classes.ö With JAVelin the focus is unashamedly on classes, their data
- and methods and the relationships between classes. All of these are
- shown graphically in front of the programmer and access to details such
- as field types, method code etc., is never more than a few clicks awayö.
-
- An ôin builtö, intelligent editor provides editing facilities to modify
- source code for individual methods. A right click menu in the editor
- gives quick access to other components of the design which can then be
- pasted directly into the editor to save typing and remembering the names
- of classes, fields or methods.
- At the userÆs request JAVelin will automatically invoke the JAVA
- compiler (available free from SunÆs web site) to compile the underlying
- JAVA code.
-
- JAVelin is itself a truly object oriented package. The core ôclass
- modellingö capabilities of Visual Classworks/C++ and used in JAVelin
- have been in commercial use and refinement for over three years. This
- core functionality has been designed in a language independent way so
- that it can be easily extended and reused in true object oriented style,
- making it easy for us to create new products to support languages such
- as JAVA.
-
- Chris says, ôI was a believer in the object oriented way of programming
- from my first exposure to it in the late eighties. I could see its
- benefits in terms of reduced development time and increased quality and
- robustness and knew that it was not just another fad. Not long after I
- had a vision to make these benefits more easily obtainable for
- mainstream programmers by developing a graphical approach to object
- oriented programming and so formed Step Ahead Software. We see the
- results of our vision in Visual Classworks/C++ and now JAVelin.ö
-
- Chris adds: ôPractising what we preach meant applying object oriented
- methods to the development of our tool and using the tool to develop
- itself! The upshot of this is that incorporating support for the JAVA
- language took only about two weeks. As a bonus we now have a set of
- robust code to implement our graphical class modelling that is common to
- both the JAVA and C++ products. This means that we have less code to
- maintain and that class modelling features get added to both products at
- the same time. Equally important is the fact that our users can take OO
- designs developed for the C++ tool and move them accross to the JAVA
- tool, and visa versa, and automatically generate a very significant
- amount of the code in the other language.ö
-
- JAVelin runs on Win3.1, Windows 95, Windows NT (long file names and
- certai n other features are not supported when running on Win31). To
- compile and test code users will also require the JAVA JDK (available
- free from SunÆs web site) which contains the JAVA compiler and library
- classes.
-
- JAVelin was released on this Wednesday 6 March 1996. ItÆs E.R.P. is $599
- but, as an introductory offer for a short time only, the price will be
- held at $249 including shipping to anywhere in the world. A time limited
- version is available on our web site
- http://www.ozemail.com.au/~stepsoft. Purchasing information can also be
- obtained from here or by ringing 02 477 3398
-
- --
- Chris Colman
- Step Ahead Software, Makers of Visual Classworks and JAVelin
- email: stepsoft@ozemail.com.au
- web: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~stepsoft
-