'Greatly improved' Cocoa, Linux support

Real Software has updated its flagship Real Studio 2011 to Release 4, updating both the web and desktop editions of the development environment software with what the company calls "greatly improved" support for Cocoa (including more than 60 Cocoa-specific bug fixes) and upgraded Linux support for printing and graphics. The Cocoa improvements are featured as "in beta" until Real Studio 2012 Release 1 is made available.

The program offers object-oriented programming tools for cross-platform apps that work with all three major platforms in its Desktop Edition, and creates web-based applications with its Web Edition. In all, Release 4 sports 200 improvements and 26 new features, focusing primarily on better support for Cocoa and Linux improvements.

For Linux, Release 4 brings high-resolution printing to the platform on par with Windows of Mac OS X, and graphics now support smoother drawing, anti-aliasing, hardware acceleration (where available) and translucency. Real Studio now supports alpha channels for all platforms, allowing colors to be drawn at any level of opacity.

In addition, Prepared Statements are now supported for ODBC, which improves security, and the Real Studio IDE now has full localization for the Portuguese language. For Cocoa, the company says that "many improvements" have been made in the Cocoa-based Mac framework, allowing projects to "just work" as expected when built with it.

The new Release 4 is now available for current and new Real Studio users. It is available on the company's website, along with 30-day trial versions of all the different variants of Real Studio. Pricing begins at $99 for the Personal Edition, with the Professional Edition (required for cross-platform compilation) is $299 and the Enterprise Edition for full-time developers is $995 (and includes both Desktop and Web deploying abilities). Real Studio Web Edition for those who just want to compile web applications is priced at $599.

by MacNN Staff