info-mac@uw-beaver (12/18/84)
From: Dan_Bower%RPI-MTS.Mailnet@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA (For the infomac digest...) For some time, the US Department of Transportation has specified the UCSD p-System for all micro-based software developed under USDOT sponsorship. This policy is currently under review for a number of reasons, including the lack of mass market popularity for the p-System on micros newer than the Apple II. As I'm sure most readers of this digest are aware, Softech has introduced two versions of the p-System for the Mac. Is anyone out there using either flavor of the p-System to develop Mac software? To all developers, what are your general thoughts about the p-System for the Mac, and the p-System in general? Please send all comments to: Dan_Bower%rpi-mts@MIT-Multics.ARPA and I'll post a summary. Dan Bower Transit Industry Microcomputer Exchange Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
info-mac@uw-beaver (12/22/84)
From: cornell!vax135!ariel!hou4b!hou5f!hou5e!ihw@uw-beaver.arpa I bought the UCSD Pascal p-system with my Mac recently. I have not used it very much but I am rather disappointed with it. It is NOT a Mac product; it is merely a 68000 port of their other PC-based p-systems- all their utilities are keyboard based and make absolutely no use of the mouse; they have to compensate even for cursor keys by substituting weird key combinations. the documentation that comes with it is generic; a small supplement describes how to use it on a Mac, but this is mostly how to make it work on a Mac - not special Mac features. very little support for Mac features (menus, windows, graphics) - a small library with a few drawing routines, I think. all files reside in a 'p-volume' which is itself a Mac file, so you cannot access files outside of the p-system environment. it produces p-code that will run only in the p-system environment. Leaving behind the aforementioned issues, the p-system is probably as good as the ones developed for other systems, which I understand, is very good. SofTech does also have a Macintosh development environment for Pascal- mouse editor, full access to quickdraw routines, etc. This seems to have come out much later than their original p-system. (I should have waited for this.) My understanding is that it produces stand-alone code (not p-code) that does not need a support environment to run. I am still interested in my p-system for the Mac and would like to run software developed for other p-systems (that is supposed to be the beauty of p-code). Also, I want to develop a p-system library to gain full access to th Quickdraw routines. If you do go with the p-system, keep in touch; perhaps we can help each other out. Happy Macking, Irwin Walkenfeld AT&T Information Systems Laboratories Holmdel, NJ ....!hou5e!ihw