info-mac@uw-beaver (02/04/85)
From: <bang!crash!bwebster@Nosc> > I am marketing a commercial package written in TurboPascal. I would >like to offer it to the Mac marketplace and had planned to do so based on the >persistent rumors that Borland was going to make a Mac version of their system. >Recent rumors; however, indicate that this may not be the case. I had thought so until I talked with Philippe Kahn about two weeks ago (the day of the Apple Shareholders' Mtg). He said that Borland *will* do a Turbo Pascal for the Mac, but also emphasized that it was a low-priority project, and that their work on the Amiga took precedence. In other words, the product may come out, but don't expect it for a year or so. > I understand that there are two versions of Pascal available for the >MAC, and I would like to develop a fall back position using one of them. It is >my understanding that both of these Pascal's use P-code which means that I >might be limited to the submarket of Mac owner's who have Pascal. This is >clearly not a desirable situation. You are right; SofTech Microsystems does market two implementations of UCSD Pascal for the Macintosh. The first is a complete version of the p-System that, indeed, runs under the p-System, not using the Mac interface at all. If you've used the p-System on any other machine, you'll feel right at home here. They don't provide much of an interface to the Toolbox-- just a small library--but if you get the Advanced Developer's Kit, you get a 68000 assembler and the source to that library, so that you can try to call Toolbox routines yourself. If you're planning to use the standard Mac user interface, I would not advise you to go with the p-System. The second product, MacAdvantage: UCSD Pascal, is a Pascal development system running under the Finder. It has all Mac-style utilities, including Consulair's nifty (though slightly buggy) program editor that is disk-based and allows you to have up to four files open at the same time. The Pascal has access to about 95% of the Toolbox routines; you'll need Inside Mac to really make use of them, but that's true of most development languages on the Mac. I've been using MacAdvantage heavily for the last month or two, converting my Go program from MacFORTH to Pascal, and I've been very pleased with how easily I've added Mac-style features, such as a FILE menu with NEW, OPEN, SAVE, SAVE AS, PRINT, and so on. Unless you're converting an existing p-System application and want to maintain the same user interface, I can't really recommend using the Mac p-System. I *can* recommend using MacAdvantage, though (since it *is* p-code) it isn't as fast as a true compiled language. Both require some sort of support files to run, but if you're developing an application program that you plan to sell, SofTech will cheerfully license the appro- priate files to you--for a fee. > Can someone tell me if the license agreement for either of the >existing Pascal provides (even for a fee) the right to include P-Code as a >part of a commercial package written in that version of Pascal? If you want to bundle the appropriate support files into your application, you have to license them from SofTech. Their licensing fees have shifted dramatically during the last year, but are still (in my opinion) not really competitive with the rest of the market. For the Mac p-system, you've got to license the whole p-system. There are three schedules; all three require a prepayment of so many licenses and have a "per copy" charge. The cheapest of the three requires $1.25 or 10% of list, whichever is less, but you have to prepay $6000's worth of licenses. Again, MacAdvantage has a great edge over the p-system. The licensing fee is a flat $500/year/product. That represents a tremendous change for SofTech, but I'm still not sure they can compete with other development languages at that price. You see, MacAdv still has the disadvantage of being slow, slower than Lisa Pascal-based products or even than the various C compilers running on the Mac. I've considered releasing my Go program as a freeware (send-me-$15-if-you-like-it) product, but does that mean that I have to pay $500/year for as long as I get money from people? I think that they would have been much better off with a one-time $500/product license, or (better yet) a one-time $500 developer's fee. As it is, I am now considering finding someone with a Lisa (er, Mac XL) once my program is done and converting it to Lisa Pascal. That will not only allow it to run much faster, it'll make distributing it much easier. Or, once I can see some sort of consensus on which C system is the best, I'll buy it and convert the whole thing to C. Comments from anyone else? ..bruce.. Bruce Webster/BYTE bang!crash!bwebster@nosc ihnp4!crash!bwebster