Industry-standard support

Unlike most Smalltalk class libraries that were developed in the absence of standards, VA Smalltalk was developed based on existing industry software and hardware standards. The use of these standards is a major benefit to development teams because it means that Smalltalk developers can use the same terminology and application protocols used in other languages. This reduces the need for vendor-specific Smalltalk documentation and training for the base class libraries, window systems, file systems, and graphics and process models. It also leverages a corporation's investment in standards training and documentation.

VA Smalltalk is based on the following industry standards:

•	The X Window System

•

OSF/Motif

•

POSIX.1

•	Smalltalk-80: The Language and Its Implementation (commonly referred to as the "Blue Book" because of its distinctive cover)

•	ANSI Smalltalk Standard ANSI/NCITS 319-1998 Smalltalk Programming Language, available in PDF format from http://www.techstreet.com/cgi-bin/detail?product_id=56122  or on our website at ANSI Draft (ANSI NCITS 319-1998)

The following table lists the subsystems and the standards upon which they are based.

Table 1. Industry Standards

VA Smalltalk Subsystem	Based on These Industry Standards
Common Language Data Types	Smalltalk-80 Blue Book, IBM Red Book and ANSI Smalltalk Standard
Common Language Implementation	Smalltalk-80 Blue Book, IBM Red Book and ANSI Smalltalk Standard
Common Process Model	Smalltalk-80 Blue Book and ANSI Smalltalk Standard
Common File System	POSIX.1 and Smalltalk-80 Blue Book
Common Graphics	X Window System
Common Widgets	OSF/Motif
Common Printing	X Window System

Although not essential, familiarity with the above standard interfaces is helpful to understanding and using the VA Smalltalk subsystems.

ANSI Smalltalk Support

All methods supporting the ANSI Smalltalk protocol are categorized as ANSI-API. Methods associated with ANSI Smalltalk function that is not complete in this release are categorized as ANSI-Unimplemented.

At the time of this writing, the following restrictions with respect to ANSI Smalltalk are in force:

•	The following Exception methods are not supported

a.

isNested

b.

outer

c.	resignalAs:

d.	retryUsing: