IBM Corp is promising an early access version of the Taligent Inc application environment TalAE for OS/2 within a few weeks’ time, followed later in the autumn by AIX, then support for OS/400. The implementations are part of an Early Experience Programme it kicked off at Object World last week. Although ostensibly a partner on the technology, IBM has been working hard to be first out with an implementation of Taligent’s recently-delivered pre-beta TalAE PEE Kit, not wishing to be usurped by Hewlett-Packard Co. IBM will provide code, derived from the code Taligent created on top of AIX, documentation and training to some of its corporate accounts and independent software vendors. Following beta test environments from Taligent later this year, user-ready TalAE will ship during the first half of next year on OS/2, AIX and some OS/400 components such as the database, communications and telephony subsystems. It has begun beta-testing Windows versions of the VisualAge Smalltalk-based object development environment and a stand-alone version of the Smalltalk language VisualAge uses. Both ship in the autumn and will eventually be available for developing under TalAE, IBM says. It will incorporate its System Object Model into to all future versions of VisualAge and plans to integrate Envy/400, the AS/400 Smalltalk development system, with VisualAge. Object-oriented Cobol will test this year.
