Contents
This topic briefly summarises the new features introduced in ER5. Full details of the changes are given in a series of EPOC Technical Papers available from the Symbian website at http://www.symbian.com.
The description of the changes is split into the following functional areas:
Application engines
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application components with no user interface, used for manipulating the applications data models
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Base
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core operating system and Emulator
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Communications
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Internet, serial, infra-red, and other communications protocols
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EIKON and graphics
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graphical user interface, system shell, and graphics
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Engine Support
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components without any user interface, that are used by application engines
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Messaging
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architecture to support email, fax, SMS, and other message types
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Web
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Web browsing architecture
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The Agenda model has changed to allow concurrent access to an Agenda document by more than one client: see Agenda Server Reference.
Base changes offer the following new features:
- array handling: see Range Check Wrapper For C++ Arrays
- cleanup-related functions transferred from STORE to E32: see Cleanup Utilities
- console size KConsFullScreen provided, which produces a full-screen console on any display
- E32 and F32 performance improvements
- Emulator works in any directory, and can be more flexibly configured
- files use UTC timestamps (rather than local time), to provide improved synchronisation support.
- loading of EXEs and DLLs improved
- kernel changed to provide better support for a wider range of target architectures, better interrupt-handling, power management and peripheral bus architectures for i/o devices, and other API changes. As a result all device drivers must be rewritten. See the separate Writing Device Drivers document for details.
- literal string handling improved: see Literal Descriptors
- local file systems now use fully asynchronous calls to read and write data.
- makmake improvements, requiring changes to project files: see Changes required for UID specification
- math functions revised to give results to conform with Java Compatibility Kit™ requirements
- PC Card interface now supports i/o cards in addition to memory cards
- CommDb is the new EPOC communications database server. This server provides access to an (extensible) database which holds information about Internet Service Providers (ISPs), modems, locations, charge-cards and communications-related timeouts. For details, see Communications Database.
- ETel is the new EPOC telephony server. It presents a straightforward but comprehensive telephony interface to EPOC applications, by abstracting the details of controlling and working with telephone devices and services. For details, see About ETel.
- The Network Interface Manager provides a new API which allows application to discover the current stage of a dial-up connection. For details, see Connection Progress Information.
- IrObex infra-red support added
- TCP/IP components offer improved PPP functionality. TCP/IP is documented in the C++ System Documentation, see TCP/IP
- colour support has been added to graphics: see Colour Support.
- Open Font introduced: a new plug-in architecture that to allow use of font files in any format. For details, see Open Font System.
- application architectures support of non-EPOC documents identified by MIME type: see the separate EPOC Tools & Utilities documentation for details.
- client-server implementation of the DBMS
- multiple process support in the C Standard Library
- file converter architecture improved
- version reporting added to the OPX export interface: see Changes to the OPX export interface
ER5 introduces a new extensible messaging architecture, described in Messaging Architecture. Applications can have immediate access to message-sending facilities through the Send As interface.
The ER5 Web application has a new extensible architecture. Details of its API will be available in future documentation.