VA Assist for Smalltalk is a powerful add-on to VisualAge Smalltalk for Windows, OS/2 and Unix. It gives you much better control over your ENVY library management tasks. Maintaining Configuration Maps and Applications is greatly simplified with VA Assist for Smalltalk's powerful tools. VA Assist for Smalltalk will also allow you to build VisualAge Smalltalk applications far more easily and quickly with the VisualAge Composition Editor and code browsers.

VA Assist for Smalltalk streamlines most common editing operations and adds many time-saving features. VA Assist modernizes the look of all browser windows with icons, color and hover help. It also adds universal drag/drop to all browser windows as well as many new advanced config map management tools. Appropriate copy and move semantics are supported for dragging and dropping methods, classes, applications, categories, config maps, users, etc. in every conceivable direction. The advanced config map management tools allow you to quickly identify out of date configs and rapidly update them. Modified applications can be "released" into their containing config maps and the entire config map hierarchy can be updated in a single step. The release also supports auto-spell correction and dynamic spell checking. Instantly highlights any misspelled (or missing) message selectors (or globals) in red (or any error color you like via the color syntax configuration window). Common errors like "slef" are automatically corrected to "self".

Key Features

Browser & ENVY Enhancements

Composition Editor UI Assistant

What's in the 6.0 Release?

• Full support for version 6.0 of VisualAge Smalltalk
• Modern, new look for all browser windows —colors, icons & hover help
• Universal Drag/Drop in all browser panes
• Customizable toolbars for all code browsers and the UI Assistant
• Fully customizable color syntax highlighting — dozens of sample color schemes provided.
• Powerful change propagation tools — modify an app and update all affected maps in one step
• Dynamic & Batch-Oriented Spell Checking — catch spelling errors and common typos instantly.
• Auto-Spell Correction —automatically correct "slef" to "self", etc.
• Version renaming commands —baseline app names with ease!
• Abbreviation expansion —reduce frequently typed expressions to a couple of keystrokes
• Browser synchronization —never loose edits again!
• Automatic tracking of recently modified and visited methods
• Integrated history/find feature in all browsers — quickly find or revisit a class in seconds!
• Senders/Implementors in popup text menu — parse tree based for accuracy
• Customizable version name templates — easily establish a corporate version name standard
• String search within individual classes, class hierarchies or the entire system
• Variable scoping on Senders/Implementors-root application, dependent apps, selected apps
• Enhanced messages window for Senders and Implementors
• Enhanced wildcard method search window for Senders and Implementors
• Customizable App & Configuration filter-hide the apps & configs you aren't interested in
• Recursive app, subapplication & class versioning —version an entire application in a single step!
• Unreleased class browser — quickly see all unreleased classes for a user.
• Advanced edit features — comment/uncomment, indent/unindent, auto indent, insert matching, etc
• Enhanced Debugger — adds "Through", "To Cursor" and "Define" options
• Enhanced Inspectors — colors, icons, hover help, etc.
• Marked method browser
• Smart prompters with memory
• Prerequisite&dependent path determination-find out why app is listed as prerequisite/dependent
• Locate Application —Locate the Configuration Maps that hold onto the selected application
• Locate Dependents —Locate the configurations dependent on the selected specific configuration
• Revision Notes —Specify revision notes when versioning applications and classes
• Release All Latest —Releases the latest editions of the included applications
• Browse Changes Including Required Maps —Browse the changes between any two config map editions including any changes in their required maps
• Super user features —manipulate editions and versions regardless of ownership
• New importing and exporting commands in the configuration maps browser
• Dozens of additional power user features added to the code browsers, applications manager, application editions browser and configuration maps browser

UI Assistant

VA Assist Pro UI Assistant shown in floating mode

VA Assist Pro UI Assistant shown in embedded mode

Some of the Tools page features are Select All, Select All in Same Class, Bring to Front, Send to Back, and Inspect. The Settings page allows you to change many common part styles without needing to access the settings view. Style changes can be applied to multiple widgets simultaneously. The Layout page includes attachment styles that can be applied to one or more widgets with a single mouse click. Lock a group of widgets to the lower right corner of the window with one mouse click! The Size and Position page has a over dozen options such as Set Size and Position, Alignment, Move and Size by Pixel. The Links page gives you a dozen options for displaying and filtering displays of links. This lets you concentrate on just the event or attribute connections you're interested in. VA Assist for Smalltalk includes other commands too numerous to mention here — over 100 in all. Some of these commands replicate commands that are available in deeply nested menus under VisaulAge. Most of them are new to the VisualAge user. VA Assist for Smalltalk does not modify any Composition Editor code and has no effect on run-time code because it uses only existing protocols and accesses existing development time data structures in the same way the Composition Editor does. All features are completely integrated with the Composition Editor's undo/redo facility. VA Assist for Smalltalk can be easily enabled and disabled at any time.