knudsen@ihwpt.UUCP (mike knudsen) (03/04/86)
References: <469@watdragon.UUCP> I've had OS9 for over 2 years and do a lot of C graphics work on it. About your questions: No screen editor included, just a weird line editor. Get TS-Edit (VERY vi-like) from RS for $35 (what a buy-- it comes with a Basic version too) which includes its own hi-res text screen; or Dynastar from Frank Hogg which is more like Emacs. It requires a separate hi-res screen driver, O-Pak. If you like vi get the TS-Edit, period. C is very complete and very solid. It lacks the latest features (bitmaps and structure assignment) and supports floats, doubles, and longs, but provides no library of trig & exp functions. The overall libraries are terrific, even include a quicksort routine. OS-9 is much like U**x on the surface. Biggest omissions are wild-card filenames (* and ?), and no $PATH -- all your executables must be in one directory to be accessed without full pathnames. Also no loop constructs in the shell. SOmeone has just come out with a "ksh" to replace the OS9 shell and fix most of the above. Many everyday U**x utilities (grep, sort) are missing, but you can buy these elsewhere (see below). BTW, no OS9 software is copy-protected, not yet anyway. Running on one disk is possible but gets old fast, esp'ly a SS 35-track. Don't bother buying C till you've saved enuf for a second drive; it may be possible but you'll hate it. I use 3 drives -- one for /bin, one for the C libes and defs (good use for you original RS drive), and one for my sources and objects. Don't waste your money on anything less than a double-sided 40-track drive. They fill up fast. You should consider BASIC09 for small programs, especially utilities to do weird things with files (like patch up blown directories, etc) or anything to do with strings. BASIC09 lacks pointers, global, and static variables -- other than that it's great if your programs aren't too big. Hackers use BASIC09 the way U**x users do the Shell -- to write quick throw-away programs. Also great to test and refine new algorithms before going to C, where the test-edit-compile cycle is several minutes long (Basic09 is seconds). Nroff can be approached with the Dynastar/Dynaform stuff mentioned above, but those are more of a what-you-see is-what-you-get system. The latest Rainbow has an ad for something very much like nroff, probably from Computerware. I suggest you read the Rainbow mag very carefully to help answer your last question about software availability and $$-able gaps therein. There are no semi-secret "developer's kits" -- you use what anyone else can buy. Lots of places now sell packages of U**x-like utilities already, but many of these could stand improvement as they fall short of the "real thing." The OS9 software market is OK and getting better, and is by no means saturated. Don't let the low traffic on this group fool you. There are a lot of us OS9ers out there. mike k
jimomura@lsuc.UUCP (Jim Omura) (03/05/86)
I'll just add a bit to what 'ihwpt!knudsen' said.
I think the most valuable resources for the OS-9 user are The Rainbow
Magazine, 68 Micro Journal and the OS-9 Users' Group. I read The Rainbow
and 68MJ myself, but I'm not yet a member of the Users' Group (soon I hope).
There are a massive number of public domain program, including most of
the Unix utilities that aren't standard and are commonly used.
Bob Larson has 'microEMACS' source code for the Color Computer OS-9
and will be posting it on his own system (details available from
'oberon!blarson', he posted it to INFO-68K a while back). If I get
the source, now that it looks like 'mod.os.os9' is going to die, I'll
post it to 'net.sources'.
I think my C compiler (same one as mentioned before) handles 'structure'.
I ran the Dhrystone on it, so I'm fairly sure about that. I think we're
missing ENUM though and #ifndef (why only the negative #if form doesn't
work I'll never know).
The Pascal is also a good language package (I haven't had a chance
to use it, but have had it for a couple of months now--looks fine).
I use OS-9 with 1 80 Cylinder drive and 2 40 Cylinder drives, not
as a programmer, but as a 'small business' (I'm a lawyer by trade).
As far as I'm concerned, yes, 2 drives are *very* minimal, and they should
not be the silly Radio Shack 35 track money wasters.
Cheers! -- Jim O.
--
James Omura, Barrister & Solicitor, Toronto
ihnp4!utzoo!lsuc!jimomura
Byte Information eXchange: jimomura
(416) 652-3880color@ihlpg.UUCP (Rhodes) (03/05/86)
This is posted as an addendum to the info presented by Mike
Knudsen:
TSWORD is one of the new version 02.00.00 CoCo OS9
packages finally released by the Shack. It uses nroff-compatible
commands embedded in text with a nifty window into the rough document
to do screen formatting on the fly. A VSHELL is supplied that
is capable of accepting at least one shell parameter. I
haven't used this application yet as I'm hung up getting it
to work from /D1 (that's the second disk drive).
Last month the Shacks here had a half-price CoCo
software sale. D.L. Logo has a vi-like editor and does sound
with a version 01.01.00 boot plus sound cartridge. A brain-
damaged screen dump package exists: the 256x192 graphics screen is
bit-mapped to dot-matrix printers but circles become oblong
in the process. A third party harware-software package called
CoCoMax (imitates the MacIntosh-screen menus stuff) does
screen dumps to dot-matrix printers the right way.
I've been very pleased with the performance of the
CoCo under OS-9 control and look forward to some kind of
ram-disk to speed up command execution. I have integrated
a terminal at 9600 baud and an auto-answer modem lets me login
remotely. XCOM9 is a shareware product available from the
OS9 Users Group that does XMODEM protocol file transfers.
I even have a real-time clock so I don't have to set
the clock at boot time. Don't forget to do this or else some
version 01 programs won't work.
My cat once fried my motherboard by knocking over the
disk-drives. Total repair cost from the Shack was $65. The
one thing I will say bad about the Shack is that their documentation
is plagued with typos. When I read something I always use a
rule of 50-50: it's either true or it's false.
Jeff.Rhodes
ps. I know I need to make a disclaimer so here it is: use the
rule of 50-50 for all of the above.