ignatz@aicchi.UUCP (Ihnat) (09/19/85)
Long, long ago in a galaxy far away, I needed to buy a 'C' compiler for my little old CP/M system. After a market survey, I settled on the Aztec compiler for portability and compatibility. With some relatively minor problems, I never regretted it. However, until recently, I touted Lattice as the MS-DOS compiler of choice. Until I had to convert a package written in an old version of Aztec, and the client ordered the latest release (3.20d) of the Commercial Development system. I've been doing heavy development with it now for two weeks. In a word, it's outstanding! It comes with the by-now expected different memory models, full source for all libraries, and a handful of utilities---grep, make, z (a vi-like full screen editor), ls, an object archive utility, and a symbolic debugger. It compiles much faster than Lattice, and the resultant executable files have FAR less wasted code from library overhead--most of the programs I've been converting have been as much as 2/3 smaller--and all have run quite a bit faster. Documentation is quite extensive; in fact, the only complaint I've been able to find with the whole package is that there's no cross-referenced index to the documentation (although each section has an index). And I'm quite hard to satisfy. That's enough; all I can say, in closing, is that Lattice had better get on the ball, because as of now, they can't come close to touching Manx! I can't remember when I've ever been able to give this good a review to any software package. -- Dave Ihnat Analysts International Corporation (312) 882-4673 ihnp4!aicchi!ignatz