info-mac@uw-beaver (12/22/84)
From: <bang!crash!bwebster@Nosc>
Dan -
I've used both p-Systems quite a bit (I'm reviewing them for BYTE), so
here are my thoughts on both, for what they're worth.
"Product A" is an almost-direct port of the p-System to the Mac. This
was released in August 84, well ahead of schedule (SofTech's marketing
people were caught by surprise, not expecting the product to be ready for
several more weeks or even months). It doesn't use the Finder environment
at all. Instead, it boots you up into a standard (well, almost standard)
p-System environment: prompt line across the top of a 85 column x 34 line
display. It's pretty much version IV.1 p-System, with all the features
and drawbacks thereof. The basic development system is $195 and comes with
editor, compiler, filer, and a few other odds and ends. It also comes with
a "MacDraw" unit in SYSTEM.LIBRARY that allows you access to some of the
QuickDraw routines, as well as most of the Mouse routines. Some more money
gets you the Advanced Development Kit, with 68000 assembler, source (both
Pascal and assembly) of MacDraw, and more tools. The MacDraw source is
very valuable, because it shows you (more or less) how to write your own
ToolBox calls. The assembler is (again) the standard p-System assembler
with 68000 mnemonics; unfortunately, because of the p-Systems 16-bit or-
ientation, the assembler is a 16-bit assembler, causing some hassles when
you want to work with 24- or 32-bit values.
Anyone familiar with the p-System will feel right at home with Product
A. I took a graphics library that I had been developing on the Apple II
for about 2 years and converted most of it to the Mac (using assembly
language calls to the ToolBox as well as some custom assembly stuff of my
own) in about a week. I think that I could have converted the game I
wrote (SunDog: Frozen Legacy, in Apple Pascal/6502 assembly) to the Mac
using Product A in about 3 months, possibly less. It does suffer from
the same disk slowness as other Mac products, but you can do honest-to-
goodness development on a single-drive, 128K Mac (though I do recomment
two drives). In fact, the current product doesn't take advantage of
512K Macs, and I'm not sure just how SofTech plans to support the extra
RAM (they have several options).
"Product B" (known as "The MacAdvantage: UCSD Pascal") was just released
about two weeks ago, at the start of December. I have a beta copy and will
(hopefully) soon get a finished copy. Product B is not the p-System; it is
a UCSD Pascal compiler running under the Finder. A Mac-style editor is
used (the same one, apparently, found in Apple's assembler/debugger); you
can even use MacWrite if you like. The compiler produces an application
file full of p-code; when you double-click it, it loads the p-machine, the
runtime system, and any library stuff needed, and then executes itself.
About 95% of the ToolBox is supported in a series of units which yield
definitions and procedures identical (or nearly so) to those in Inside
Macintosh. A resource compiler is included, so you can define resources
for a program, compile them into a resource file, then have that file
included when the program itself is compiled. Debuggers are also included,
but there is no assembler (and no apparent plans for one). Cost is $195.
Of the two, I prefer "Product B". Its main disadvantage is that there
is a very steep learning curve, i.e., the same one for Lisa Pascal or any
other language that requires you to wade through Inside Mac. Even so, I
feel like I am doing true Mac development on a Mac (instead of on a Lisa).
And there aren't the compatibility problems that exist with Product A.
Another advantage is licensing fees. Product A has a standard SofTech
money-up-front-and-so-much-per-copy fee (high volume is $6000 up front
and $1.25/10% of retail per copy, whichever is cheaper). Product B has
a flat $500/year-unlimited-copies fee.
Feel free to contact me with any more questions you might have.
..bruce..
Bruce F. Webster
Contributing Editor, BYTE
6215 Thorn Street
San Diego, CA 92115
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