info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac) (11/07/84)
From: Dick Kalagher <kalagher@mitre> The following are some random comments about Macpascal after using it intensivly for the past two weeks. The application was a preprocessor for psudo-FORTRAN that would convert WHILE and REPEAT loops to standard FORTRAN. 1. Since this involved FORTRAN source code, where spaces at the beginning of the line are important, the proportional spacing was the main problem. The text editor and the file printer that are on the Pascal disk need to be modified if you want monospacing. I took the easy way and used Macwrite with Monoco font. 2. If you use the Pascal text editor, Macwrite will no longer accept the file. 3. On two occassions, I tried to print a listing using "standard". I got the "Printing message" but no printout. Draft printing worked OK. I don't know if this is a problem with Pascal, the imagewriter or what--need to investigate further. 4. Pascal does graphics very fast (probably due to quickdraw, not Pascal) but the text processing was very slow. Over a minute to read, process and write a 35 line FORTRAN program. 5. Sometimes a correct line in the program will show up as incorrect(outlined). This occurs when you are correcting a previous syntax error. You need to scroll the text off the screen and back again to get it to appear correct. This could throw new students. 6. This program used up 53% of the available memory. Editing at times was very sluggish as the program got larger. 7. . w 7. If you run the program, the window you are writing to does not automatically become active. Even MS Basic got that right. 8. Overall I am very pleased-- these are relativly minor problems. Now when will we see the compiler...
info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac) (11/08/84)
From: lewis@harvard.ARPA (Harry Lewis) Re: Printing from Macintosh Pascal The Pascal disk must be write-enabled to print in standard or high-res mode from Macintosh Pascal, since the Mac OS wants to use that disk to store the intermediate file. If it's write-locked, however, Pascal just gives up peacefully without saying what it's doing. I have had anotehr strange problem. When I print in draft, it prints fine but after a page or 2 I get a message that the printer isn't responding and must click "OK" to reassure Pascal that it should keep printing. I thought it might be my cable, but I have no trouble printing from any other application. Has anyone else had this problem?
info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac) (11/08/84)
From: Dick Kalagher <kalagher@mitre> The Pascal disk was write enabled, but it was full. I guess that it just peacefully quit because it had noplace to write the file. I have had the other problem--printer not responding--when printing draft from Macwrite. My guess is that the buffer in the printer sometimes gets full and the Mac operating system takes this as the printer not responding. It's annoying but doesn't happen too often.