Here you will find the high-lights, the major functionality additions and improvements in Telelogic Tau 3.5, as compared to Telelogic Tau 3.4.
It is beyond the scope of this document to provide thorough explanations on each topic. You will find a complete list of news and changes in New and Changed Functionality.
The licensing mechanism has been updated to FLEXlm version 6.1. For information on how this can affect your Telelogic Tau licenses, see FLEXlm License Daemon.
To facilitate entering long file or directory names, you can now simply type a few characters and let the tool fill in the rest, so-called file name completion. This functionality does not exist in Cmicro or ITEX.
The Organizer will now keep track of all opened windows for you and restore them again. The size and position of all Organizer, MSC Editor, Object Model Editor, State Chart Editor and SDL Editor windows are saved whenever you save the system file. When you re-open the system file, the Organizer can restore all your windows to their original state.
The Organizer will also keep track of earlier opened system files, allowing you to re-open them by simply selecting them in the File menu.
You may also specify target directories as relative to the source directory. In this way, you can easily keep all related files together.
All the diagram editors now feature Back and Forward buttons to allow you to move between diagrams, similar to what is found in web browsers.
If you open a write-protected file, the diagram editor will work in a view-only mode. You may also lock files you work on to avoid that somebody else changes them at the same time.
You can now use wildcards in text searches. For example "in*t" will find both "init" and "input".
You can now generate web documentation of your systems similar to the printed documentation. Related pages are linked at the HTML level and diagrams are generated in the public domain format PNG, supported by Netscape Navigator 4.0 and Microsoft Internet Explorer version 4.0 and later. The GIF format is not supported, since it is protected by patents. This functionality is not available for ITEX.
Web browsers have become commonplace, so the on-line help is now available only as HTML. The FrameMaker format is discontinued.
You can now generate MSC text files (PR) according to the MSC'96 standard from MSC and HMSC files. The generation can also be activated from external tools as a service in the public interface.
The MSC Editor has been rewritten to offer the same level of functionality as the other editors. You may for example edit text directly in the text objects, move several objects at the same time and have syntax checked immediately after entering the text.
The MSC Editor now allows you to both decompose and collapse instances. In this way, you may for example refine instances representing blocks by opening them and adding instances representing the processes inside them. All the messages defined at the higher level are passed down. You may also go the other way by selecting several instances and collapse them into a single instance. The collapsed instances are created as a separate diagram and represented in the original diagram by a single new instance.
The MSC Editor now supports the "lost message" and "found message" symbols for messages for which the source or destination instance is not defined.
You should notice that the storage format has changed in 3.5. MSC diagrams stored in the new format cannot be read by older versions of the MSC Editor.
The support for batch execution now exists on all supported platforms.
You can now have change bars for text that has changed in SDL diagrams.
You may also move easily between the definition and the use of a symbol, assuming you have loaded and updated the cross-reference file in the Index Viewer. In this way you can for example easily move between the input or output of a signal and the declaration of its parameters.
You may now more easily save entered Simulator UI commands in a file.
The Simulator and Validator can now read in synonym definitions from an external file.
The Validator now has the option to ignore the value of signal parameters during verification. It also supports redefinition of MSC instances.
The Analyzer has been improved. It now analyzes large SDL systems 40-50% faster.
The Analyzer error messages have been revised to make them easier to understand, in particular by relating them to the actual context in which the error occurs.
Cmicro now supports object-oriented constructs. The following constructs are supported: types, inheritance and instantiation for systems; types, inheritance, instantiation and virtual types for blocks and processes; virtual, redefined and finalized for input and save in process types.
You may also define timers with one integer parameter.
A number of predefined kernels for host simulation are now available, allowing easy simulation on host.
On UNIX, the Graphical Tree Editor is no longer part of ITEX.