Editor's Note

Mary Elaine Califf

Welcome to the conference issue. We've tried this month to gather articles from several of the conference presenters in order to give those who couldn't get to San Diego more information than can be conveyed in a conference report, and to give those who did go some hard copies with perhaps some additional detail.

Not from the conference

We do have several items not conference-related. Besides the usual association news, Steve Mann provides reports on the San Francisco MacWorld Expo and the Microsoft Windows™ Programming Conference for Macintosh Developers. Jeff Alger and Eric Berdahl are at it again, this time on the subject of code reuse.

Introduction To . . .

If you get the feeling that this issue has a lot of articles that are introductions to something, you're getting a good feel for this year's conference. In this issue we have introductions two object-oriented languages: Dylan and Beta; a new development environment, Camelot, that uses a third language, Fire; a methodology for analysis and design; a library for front-ending mainframe applications; a tool for analysis and design; and a direct broadcast satellite system which will use OOP.

Unfortunately, some of the most important topics of the conference are missing. The Bedrock team was there and gave more information than they have in the past, though not enough to satisfy most of their listeners. Taligent also put in an appearance. They didn't say much, but left a more satisfied audience, probably because of lower expectations. For details of the presentations, see the conference report.

To many, the most important event of the conference came in a comment from the back of the room when Apple promised a bug-fixing release of MacApp 3 as soon as possible. As soon as possible has not, of course, been defined, but the promise itself is a new and encouraging development for those of us still plugging away with MacApp.

The response to MADA feedback was in general an encouraging feature of the conference. Several vendors at least claimed to be changing priorities to more quickly incorporate missing that audience feedback indicated were important.

Upcoming Issues

In following issues we look forward to reviews of NeoAccess, POET, ObjectMaster, InsideOut, and Component Workshop, as well as technical articles on Prograph, MCL, Dylan, Bedrock, and, of course, MacApp. The May issue will include the second half of Jeff Alger and Neal Goldstein's article on SBM as well as a second article on BETA. We will also be introducing you to VDL Companion™, a currently beta CASE tool from SBM International.