AppleLink APPLE II DEVELOPMENT FORUM May 30, 1989 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time Topic: Pascal and C Forum Leader: Dave Sugar (AFL Dyfet) AFL Dyfet Okay, good evening and welcome to the tuesday night Apple AFL Dyfet Development Forum chat. Tonight's topic will be C and Pascal. AFL Dyfet We will, of course, be using protocol here tonight, starting now. AFL Dyfet If you wish to ask a question, you must enter a '?' on a line AFL Dyfet by itself, and if you wish to comment on the current question you AFL Dyfet must enter a '!' on a line by itself. I will call each of you in turn. AFL Dyfet Now, can we have the first questions, please...:) Coach101 ? AFL Dyfet Okay Coach, GA. AFA Gary J Q = Coach Coach101 Does anyone know if ByteWorks released their "C" compiler and if so, Coach101 has anyone had any experience with it? GA AFL Dyfet I beleive they showed a beta at AppleFest, but I haven't heard since...anyone AFL Dyfet else know? AFA Gary J ! Doctor Why ! AFL Dyfet GA Gary. AFA Gary J I know someone who ordered it, and it is backordered. They didn't have a AFA Gary J definite shipping date, but it is close to shipping. AFA Gary J It was advertised in the May issue of .. AFA Gary J A+/InCider. AFA Gary J GA AFL Dyfet Okay, I see. GA Doctor. Doctor Why I ordered it at Applefest, but haven't received it yet. GA AFA Gary J Q = Coach AFL Dyfet Okay, I think we have room in the queue for a few more questions...:) AFA Gary J C seems to be very popular in our source code library lately. Coach101 Dave...., I told you not to cancel the dancing ladies! Coach101 ? AFL Dyfet Oh drat...yeah, we will need to get a new chorus line. GA Coach. Coach101 Two questions, are we using protocol so that Dave can get his Coach101 weekly jollies with the whips & chains.... Second, does anyone know Coach101 if Apple is going to do anything with "C"in the new APW that will Coach101 come out shortly after 5.0? AFL Dyfet As to APW C, the person best able to answer that question doesn't seem to be AFL Dyfet on-line at the moment...Oh, is anyone here familiar with TML's Pascal II AFL Dyfet announcement? AFA Parik yes AFL Marty I have it here someplace AFL Scott No, Tell us about it! AFA Parik but say it anyways :) AFL Dyfet Me? I haven't seen it myself yet :). I was hoping somebody could tell me :), AFL Dyfet . AFL Vince What do you want to know? AFL Marty Most important new feature is the resource editor... AFA Parik supports > 32k linkage... A GibberFC (hi all....are we in protocol ;) AFL Dyfet Sorta, Gibber. AFL Marty enables programmers to graphically define menus, windows, etc. AFL Vince new features: Complete support for 5.0, resource editor, enhanced program editor, new manual AFA Gary J Q = Dyfet (Marty, Vince) AFL Marty (I'll stop.... no need for me to be a parrot) Windrider5 ? AFA Gary J When? (This summer?? :) AFL Dyfet I do recall hearing it will ship July 1st. AFL Marty 7/1 AFL Vince Supports the new StartupTools and Shutdowntools directives, etc.. AFL Vince they are also having a programming contest with lots of nice prizes.. AFL Marty $49.95 AFA Gary J Q = Dyfet (Vince), Windrider AFA Parik (that means GS/OS will be out July 1st...?) Doctor Why ! AFL Vince they are offering TWGS for $299 AFL Marty yes Parik AFL Dyfet Sounds pretty exciting. Seems everyone will have a resource editor pretty AFA Gary J $49.95 is upgrade price? AFL Vince and they have rewritten the source code library AFL Marty Oui THE GIBBER (oops the kittens knocked the phone off the hook :( AFA Gary J What is $$$ new? AFA Gary J Q = Dyfet (Dr Why), Windrider AFL Vince I would assume $129 which is their normal retail... AFL Marty Doesn't say here. AFL Dyfet Okay, GA Dr. AFL Marty (----=====[}}}} Joe) Doctor Why Please cancel my ! it was already mentioned. JSchober (Hi all... and thrpppt Marty... :) AFL Dyfet Okay, I believe the next question is from Windrider. GA Wind. AFA Gary J Q = Windrider Windrider5 what do you mean by graphically defining menus window? AFL Marty It means point and click. AFL Dyfet I think they meant you define a resource and draw it in resedit. AFL Marty The resource editor does the job of generating the code necessary to AFL Marty draw the window at those coordinates. AFA Gary J Q = Windrider, AFL Dyfet Okay, I think it's time to fill that queue. Any new questions out there? AFA Parik ? Windrider5 I'll believe it when I see it AFL Dyfet Okay, GA Parik. AFA Gary J Q = Parik AFA Parik Does GS/OS v5.0 come with a Resource Editor itself? Is APW/TML/Genesys/etc REZ AFA Parik program a lot like the Macs REZEDIT? AFA Parik (er, resedit :) AFL Dyfet Well, the APW rez tools are more like the Mac Resouce script compiler, from AFL Dyfet what I understand. Not visual, just text. GENESYS is a full blown visual AFL Dyfet resource editor that appearently genorates supporting code routines you can AFA Gary J Q = Parik AFL Dyfet then include. I have no knowledge of what TML is doing. Anyone else like to AFL Dyfet add any comments here? Coach101 ? AFL Dyfet GA Coach. AFA Gary J Q = Coach Coach101 In writing a record management package, I have been looking at some Coach101 of the code that the PAW "C" compiler generates. Some of it looks Coach101 so strange that I think I am missing something. In particular, in Coach101 accessing a char[<255] item that is passed in, the access could Coach101 be simply accomplished with indexed indirect (stack is DP in "C") but AFA Parik ? Coach101 instead the code trundles off to LMUL (or something like that) to Coach101 do a bunch of address calculation. Is this really necessary (from a Coach101 hardware viewpoint) or is the compiler just generating code from a AFA Gary J Q = Coach, Parik Coach101 universal mold that is a TAD inefficient in my case? Thanks GA AE PhilM ! AFL Dyfet GA Phil. AE PhilM Coach, the C compiler is not that smart. It does not do optimizations as well AE PhilM as some of the Pascal Compilers from TML or Byte Works....it probably treats AFA Gary J Q = Coach (Phil), Parik AE PhilM char like an array and does not special case a single demintonal array to use AE PhilM indexed addressing...and instead does a mul to find the index. AE PhilM done AFL Scott ! AFL Dyfet GA Scott. Coach101 Smart... Thats an over statement..... It is never hard to Coach101 beat a compiler in code generation.... But, the stuff from the Coach101 APW "C" compiler is really something to behold.... Coach101 That will teach Tim not to be here to defend his product :) Coach101 GA AFL Scott This is really a question for Phil... To go one step further in optimizing... AFA Gary J Q = Coach (Scott), Parik AFL Dyfet :) And even a "hello world" can be an impressively sized executable in APW C. AFL Scott Has AE any plans to write a "Cache optimized" compiler for use on systems with AFA Gary J :) AFL Scott TWGS? Coach101 GREAT QUESTION!!!!! AE PhilM No, Scott. We are not in the development tools (software) business. But we AE PhilM are working with TML and the Byte Works so that they can take advantage of any THE GIBBER Fantastic!!!! A 10 on the scale ;) AE PhilM kind of hardware we can produce. AFL Scott Thanks, Phil. AE PhilM A cache optimizing compiler is difficult at best...you really have to know AE PhilM the cache algorithm in the TWGS..not very straight forward. AE PhilM No offence Coach...I did not do APW C. Megamax Inc and Apple did it. AFA Gary J Q = Coach (Scott..Phil), Parik AFL Scott Done... AE PhilM done Coach101 Done AFL Dyfet Okay. Any more comments on APW C. AFL Dyfet Okay, I believe the next question is from Parik. GA Parik. AFA Gary J Q = Parik AFA Parik on the sub of optimizations, does COMPACT optimize code or just put it into OMF AFA Parik 2 format? also i wish more programmers would put their ds statements at the AFA Parik end of the program as compact really shrinks down the file even more. ga Coach101 ! AE PhilM Compact just puts code in OMF 2 format. AFL Dyfet GA Coach. Coach101 Phil said it! AFL Dyfet True. AE PhilM Sorry for buttin in! AFL Dyfet That's okay. But now we need to fill the queue again :). Coach101 Just keep an eye over your shoulder for Dave's whip :) AFA Gary J Q = Parik, AFL Scott ! AE PhilM Ouch!! AFL Dyfet Okay, GA Scott. *CRACK* AFL Dyfet (Must be a Tacheon Whip) AFL Scott One thing I'd like to see out of the compiler writers/Apple is an option to AFL Scott include the symbol table lib. as part of, or a separate file that can be loaded AFL Scott under utilities such as Nifty List, or even the Debugger. That way, it would AFL Scott make tracing code much easier, and it would bring Nifty List and the Debugger Coach101 ! AFL Scott up to a level such as SDA on Vax. GA AFL Dyfet GA Coach. AFA Gary J Q = Scott (Coach), Coach101 I agree Scott... But it will take more than a compiler symbol Coach101 table. In "C", or any other _stack_ based variable language, Coach101 the debugger must know how to interpret the "systems" direct page AE PhilM ! Coach101 stuff... I believe in ByteWorks "C" there is a source level debugger Coach101 scheduled to come with the compiler. In any event, if you have to Coach101 go to a debugger, at least having a hardcopy of the symbol table Coach101 would be more than handy. In other words..... I second that motion.... Coach101 Also, Coach101 One of my pet peeves is indenting my own code. I would like to Coach101 do all my code at the left margin and let the compiler indent the Coach101 listing (aha, a listing from a "C" compiler, virgin territory) to Coach101 show what the structure of the program really is. It is real easy Coach101 when chasing your code to skip a bunch of indented stuff as not being Coach101 a part of the code being executed because you have a misplaced ";" Coach101 or whatever. GA AFL Dyfet GA Phil. AFA Gary J Q = Scott (Phil), AE PhilM That's a very good suggestion Scott!! It would be pretty easy to do. Apple AE PhilM would first have to define a standard (they could use some of the un-used AE PhilM op-codes in the OMF discription)...then the others will follow suit... AE PhilM Ask Tim S about this...done AFL Dyfet I like that idea, Phil. I've been asking for some kind of Sym file or support AFL Scott Will do! Thanks, Coach, and Phil! AFA Gary J We'll just e-mail him a copy of tonight's log... :) AFL Dyfet for YEARS now. Putting it in the OMF is a very good idea. A simple utility AFL Dyfet could strip it off when your done with the SymDebug and have it working... AE PhilM Yes, the loader could ignore the symbol opcodes and it would work as normal... AE PhilM only the debuggers would have to know. AE PhilM It's a coordinated effort that has to originate from Apple to have any chance AE PhilM of succeeding. AFL Scott ! AFL Dyfet In fact, now that I think about it, many other 'profesional' environments AFL Dyfet this in that manner. GA Scott. AFA Gary J Q = Scott, AFL Scott Do Mac compilers have this facility... Dave, I was thinking specifically of AFL Scott .STB files on Vaxen! :) AFL Dyfet I was thinking Unix more than VAX myself...but yes, VAXen do have it as a AFL Dyfet seperate file. AFL Scott I agree, however that OMF is the place to put it on the II's, tho... just think AFL Dyfet Of course, on the VAX you can get post-mortum debugging and procedure call AFL Scott of the possiblities! AFL Dyfet trace... AFL Dyfet I agree that OMF is where it should be. No need to clutter, and the loader Coach101 Might put the hexadecimal calculator people out of business! AFL Dyfet could easily be tought to ignore the STB stuff. AFA Gary J Q = AFL Scott <---Lives in SDA :( AFL Dyfet Okay, any last questions for tonight. AFL Dyfet Okay, I think we can end protocol then... AFA Gary J Don't everyone shout at once.... :) Coach101 Anyone know the latest "guesstimate" on 5.0 & new APW AFA John YAH! :) JSchober RSN... AFA Gary J I've been looking at calendars here.... Apple can wait until Sept. 22 and AFA Gary J it will still be considered Summer. AFA John :) AFL Dyfet Yeah, 5.0 products may be out BEFORE 5.0 :). JSchober Gack... AFA Gary J :) AE PhilM Spoke to Jonathan Fader today....5.0 should be licencable to developers by July AFA Gary J It could be the next AppleFest before we see anything!! JSchober :( Gary AFL Dyfet TML ships july 1st, after all. Maybe they will have it on the disk...:) AFL Marty Anytime school is out for more than 2 consecutive weeks is summer... AFA John I need to get going. Good night everyone. AFL Marty as far as I'm concerned :) AFA Gary J It must be close though, with all the products anounced with it. JSchober Night, John. :) AFA Gary J Goodnight, John. AE PhilM So does Audio Animator...it requires 5.0. We needed to know if we could run AE PhilM adds AFL Marty TML Pascal II is supposed to ship sith System 5.0. AFA Gary J Well, you know how release dates are...... AFL Marty Yeah :( AFA Gary J :( Coach101 Yep, soft{ware} dates :) AFL Marty Somebody at Apple will find a way to gum up the works :( AE PhilM They keep finding bugs from what I here...found one the other day in the SCSI AFA Gary J Yep. Well, I'll try to be optimistic about this one. July 1st sounds good AFA Gary J to me. AE PhilM manager...they fixed it tho Coach101 From limited discussions with Rob Turner, I feel the internal Coach101 freeze date is REAL close! AE PhilM One week is what I heard...but I heard that last week. AFL Marty Maybe they should let ADV members beta test the disk. AFA Gary J typical.. :) AFL Dyfet TML is betting heavily that they will be able to ship July 1st.