History of the document

Version 1.0 issued Feb 28, 1997, as REQUEST deliverable 2.1.A

Version 1.1 modified to account for external comments and internal review; changes:

• abstractness of architectures and class types to be made explicit (new keyword abstract)
• new class type / body object configuration for constant
• external declaration replaced by a class type configuration part for entity
• predefined relational operators removed (were breaking encapsulation; can be declared by the user if needed)
• predefined initialization functions removed (provided possibility to define an inconsistent initial state; to be declared by the class provider)
• clarification of some semantics definitions (polymorphism, drivers and events of class-typed signals)
• inclusion of small examples to clarify the use of the constructs defined in the respective chapters

Version 1.2 additional language features for genericity; other enhancements

• generic lists added to class and derived class type declaration
• generic maps for instantiation using subtypes of generic types
• notion of pure functions of class types
• predefined prefix this to allow dynamic binding in classes
• some errors and inconsistencies removed from examples and text