Visual Prolog 7.3 New Features

Generic interfaces and classes
Monitors with guards
Native interfaces support:
- Inline structures and strings. Attributes inline/0 and inline/1
- Functor-less unions. Attribute union/0
- Passing parameters by value. Attribute byVal/0
Must-unify operator
Universal type (an extra built-in type any and predicate toAny/1->)
Conversion on polymorphic values possibility
The precedence of unary minus was changed (so that power operator has higher precedence)
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 built-in predicate fromEllipsis : (...) -> any* Terms
New warnings for:
- 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 or nondeterm).
Other new attributes (retired/1, noDefaultConstructor/1, used/0).
Runtime distinction between privately and publicly supported interfaces was removed.
Some preparations for supporting 64bit systems: built-in types integerNative and unsignedNative.
Extended versions of built-in predicates toTerm/2-> and tryToTerm/2-> (receives type as the first parameter).

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.).

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).

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

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

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

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