Below is a description of the operation of VisualKit, VisualKit Professional, Win95 Look Policy, BrewMaster, CommentMaster and DebugMaster regarding year 2000 issues. These products are each capable of differentiating between years before and after 2000, as described below. However, we are not responsible for year 2000 problems introduced by customers' application code, or by customers' modification of our base classes or tools. For a more complete discussion, please read the following text.

Memorandum

From: Objectsoft
To: Interested Customers
Date: March 21, 1999
Subject: Year 2000

In response to numerous inquiries about the ability of our products to function properly when handling dates in the year 2000 and later, Objectsoft has identified three areas which contribute to proper operation. These are the code libraries being used, the application logic, and the storage and communication of data.

Since ObjectShare supplies application development environments and software class libraries, the company can only determine the impact of the year 2000 and beyond on the standard, supported tools and code libraries available from the company and its authorized dealers. The end-user products created using these development environments and any extensions or modifications made to the standard, supported tools and code libraries are the responsibility of ObjectShare's customers and their development personnel. The following sections outline the potential impact of the year 2000 in each of these three areas and the level to which Objectsoft products can or will be affected by the year 2000 and beyond.

1. Code Libraries.  VisualKit R3.0, VisualKit Professional R3.0 and Win95 Look Policy R3.0 represent date information in an unambiguous format and all computations involving date objects are performed using this unambiguous format. The nature of this format is to represent dates internally as a number of days offset from a consistent starting date (January 1st, 1901). All applications which use the standard Date and TimeStamp classes from ObjectShare's VisualWorks environment for the representation and manipulation of date information will function correctly in the next century. For the input and display of date information in a user interface, both 2 and 4 digit year formats are supported.

   There is a complicated rule governing when a leap year will be skipped that is correctly implemented in all of the ObjectShare products mentioned in this document. This rule causes the year 2000 to be treated as a leap year with 366 days. These rules can be found by searching the web, and a summary of them is included in the addendum below.

2. Application Logic.  VisualKit R3.0, VisualKit Professional R3.0 and Win95 Look Policy R3.0 perform date conversions (from string representation) that allow the use of either four-digit or two-digit years.  Use of four-digit year formats, which is supported by all Objectsoft products, obviously does not require any conversion for new centuries.   When using two-digit representations, the conversion to a four-digit equivalent takes the current century into account, therefore treating the year '96 as 1996 until the year 2000 when it would be treated as 2096.  Applications that take advantage of this capability to allow users to input  only two digits for the year would need to be modified if and only if the resulting default is incompatible with the application logic.   Please note  that VisualWorks version 2.5.2 generally have hard-coded 1900 as the century for this particular method, so the year 96 would always be 1996.  This has been changed in VisualWave version 2.1 and VisualWorks 2.5.2.  Objectsoft libraries utilize all date specific logic from VisualWorks and therefore are subject only to limitations imposed by VisualWorks.

   Since Objectsoft cannot control the specific implementations of application logic available from its development tools, the company supplies no pre-existing facility for identifying, analyzing or modifying application code as it pertains to the ability to handle the year 2000 and beyond. Use of the standard date manipulation logic and consistent support of 4 digit year specifications will result in no known date conversion issues for the year 2000 or beyond, but adherence to these standards is beyond the control of Objectsoft in the end-user application logic.

3. Storage and Communication of Data.   VisualKit R3.0, VisualKit Professional R3.0 and Win95 Look Policy R3.0 have no interactions with external resources and are not subject to any date specific issues regarding the year 2000.

Additional Products:

Objectsoft's BrewMaster, CommentMaster, DebugMaster are built upon JDK 1.1.7 and are subject to Sun's compliance.

Additional Statements:

Objectsoft makes no year 2000 statements regarding the products of other companies intended to work with ours, even if we resell them.

Objectsoft does not provide statements regarding year 2000 behavior of product versions earlier than those mentioned in this letter.  To determine behavior of earlier versions, customers should satisfy themselves on this issue through testing, and through comparing the date-related source code of the earlier version with that of a version mentioned in this letter, or later.  If such a customer requires an official year 2000 statement from Objectsoft specific to the version they use, then their only recourse is to upgrade to a version mentioned in this letter, or later.