Quorum Changelog

What's new in Quorum 2.0

• Type System Changes:
• A number of changes have been made to the type system, finishing off a set of long planned alterations. We hope now that Quorum conforms to the best available empirical evidence.
• Actions that return a primitive text value can now return undefined.
• Text primitives can now be assigned as undefined.
• Added the ability to call actions on primitive values. For example, we can now add a colon after an integer and call any action provided by the Object version of the primitive. Generally, this makes it far less necessary to instantiate an object for a primitive type. The solution for this is relatively efficient, as behind the scenes, Quorum calls a static action, with only very slightly more overhead than calling the action on the object.
• Added all of the new type system features into the code completion APIs, meaning that integrated development environments using Quorum, like Sodbeans, should get them for automatically and without alteration.
• Language Additions/Changes:
• The "print" keyword has been changed to "output." This change conforms to data from our surveys with novices, in addition to conforming to common sense. For example, getting input from Quorum required using the word input, but getting output previously required using the word print. This made little sense, as print could have meant printing to a printer, not necessarily printing to a console. This way, input implies input and output implies output, making the language more consistent. All standard library materials, book materials, and curricular materials have been altered for the change.
• Changed the phrase "of type" in the Error architecture to "is."
• Changed the phrase "is a" in the inheritance system to "is."
• Finished a very basic initial version of accessibility APIs for Quorum. This version is largely a proof of concept, but provides some infrastructure calls down to various operating systems and unifies accessibility calls (NSAccessible, IAccessible). This first version is available only for the Windows operating system and only works when using compiled mode.
• Fixed a bug in the compiler causing extra items to sometimes be wrapped into an output .jar file.
• Added the -server command line flag. This flag turns Quorum into an HTTP server, where code can be sent to it and the output is returned. Additionally, the -server insecure can be called turn off security settings while in this mode. This last mode is not recommended unless the user is running the server locally.
• Added a new flag, -java. This flag allows the user to pass an existing Java jar file to Quorum. When passed, Quorum will automatically wrap any code into the built jar's manifest on compile. This should make it easier for external groups to combine their existing Java code with Quorum projects.
• Finished a significant optimization pass of the compiler. There is always more work that can be done in this area, but a number of the bottlenecks in the Quorum 1.7 branch and earlier have been hammered out.
• Significantly improved the -verify flag, which now gives a much better idea as to which methods have non-compiling, missing, or otherwise broken examples in the documentation.
• Removed the "quote" token from the language. Now, the text primitive or object can return special character codes by calling actions, including arbitrary unicode values. Helper methods are available for common special characters (e.g., newline, quotes, tabs).
• Lots of bug fixes.
• New Quorum Website:
• We have substantially revamped the Quorum website, including adding the ability to run some Quorum programs online and the ability to rate the words/symbols used in the standard library, in an effort to improve them further.
• The website now has a much improved look and feel.
• The page for finding files in the standard library is now grouped by category, hopefully making it easier to find classes.
• The Quorum website is now easily searchable.
• Users can now login to the website through google or a custom account.
• Pages with documentation generated by the compiler now allow the user to rate various attributes of a class (e.g., the class name, variable names, action names). The user must be logged into to rate.