Visual Prolog 7.3 New Features

Language

• Generic Interfaces and Classes
  • Conversion to generic type
• Monitors with guards
• New operator == (must-unify)
• Universal term type any and the predicate toAny/1->
• The precedence of unary minus is changed (so that power operator has higher precedence)
• New built-in predicate fromEllipsis : (...) -> any* Terms
• Runtime distinction between privately and publicly supported interfaces is removed
• Preparations for supporting 64bit systems: built-in types integerNative and unsignedNative
• Extended versions of built-in predicates toTerm/2-> and tryToTerm/2-> (type as the first parameter).
• Native interfaces support (attributes):
  • inline: Inline structures and strings.
  • union: Functor-less unions.
  • byVal: Passing parameters by value.
• Other new attributes retired, noDefaultConstructorused
• External resolution is default for predicates declared with apicall calling convention.
  • They cannot have clauses
  • explicit externally resolution is only legal when a DLL is stated

New warnings

• Local object predicates which do not use This (and therefore can be declared as class predicates)
• Unused local constants
• Condition of foreach statement which has no backtrack point (i.e. mode is not multi<vp/> or <vp>nondeterm<vp/>)
  * <vp>unheckedConversion's that would be illegal on 64 bit platforms (e.g. pointer -> integer)

IDE

• Project tree was redesigned.
• IncludedIn and Includes windows were moved to Preview Pane of project window.
• Browse dialog was improved (automatically jump to the 1st occurrence of search entity on locate, save the last dialog position, etc.).
• Find In Files dialog was improved (one result window, F8 for next, mixed case sensitive search mode, state is saved, etc.).
• Namespaces support was improved (it’s possible to put forms, etc. in a namespace).
• IntelliSense feature was strongly improved for typing speed and convenience for work.
• Improve tab navigation dialog, use ALT button for filtering [ReadOnly] windows and Del for closing windows.
• Use Project Kinds (Console application, GUI application and DLL) instead of UI Strategy and Target Type.
• Dump view improvements (Shift+F2).
• Sorting feature in Errors Window, Break points Window, etc.
• Optimal Includes Set was improved (output, local scopes, etc.).

Debugger

• Marking a particular variable in the variable window.
• View long lists improvement.
• Speed of restarting was improved.
• Memory break points and fact access (for some types).
• Scripts for break points.
• Multi-lines in tooltips.
• Multi-threaded application debugging was improved (thread names, break points handling).

PFC

New packages

• Collection library
  • Algebraic: redBlackSet, leftistPriorityQueue
  • Modifiable: mapM_redBlack, priorityQueueM_leftist, queueM_fact, setM_redBlack
  • Persistent: mapP_redBlack, priorityQueueP_leftist, queueP_fact, setP_redBlack
• varM modifiable variable
• linkControl PFC version of the Link common control
• richEditControl PFC version of the RichEdit common control
• treeControl PFC model based version of the TreeView common control
• gdiplus PFC version of GDI+
• cryptography hash, sha1, md5 & base64
• eventSource generalization of event notification/listening
• monitorQueue thread safe queue class based on the monitor facility
• reflection basic functionalty for code reflection
• inputStream_null & outputStream_null media-less streams (input is exhausted; outpt throws away)
• lZ_fileSystem_native Interface to Lempel-Ziv Decompression API functionality
• shell_api Api level interface to the Windows Shell
• winsock2_native native bindings to Windows Sockets 2

Extensions and improvements of existing packages

• List package was improved for speed (predicates sort, removeDuplicate, drop, max/min etc.) and functionality (predicate isMemberEq (and similar predicates) that uses a deterministic predicate as test)
• GUI: listControl with owner-drawing capabilities
• Extend Windows API functionality (expand uxTheme_native with the rest of the functions and the constants from vsStyle.h, etc.)
• Add moving listener/responder to splitTwoControl
• Add the fraction handling from format to formatTime
• Improve speed for some packages (string, fileName, listViewControl)
• string::rear/2-> returns the rear part of a string
• Math package: predicates roundToInteger64/1-> and roundToUnsigned64/1->
• Better handling of default button size
• msXLM_api update to version 6.0 of diverse COMponent classes

Others

• More efficient memory handling (using typed memory allocation for compound terms and internal facts chains)
• A lot of optimizations for speed and size of generated code
• Some new Demo Examples had been added (Parser Generator, LZDecompression and TreeControlDemo (CE only)).
• VipBuilder: extra option to ignore all required statements.
• Help on built-in entities.
• Extend Win32 library (with more names from MS libraries).
• Provide more context to consult exceptions.
• Linker: speed was improved.
• Vault Integration was updated to version 4.1.4