[net.micro.mac] Rascal user experiences sought

eirikur@amber.DEC (Eirikur Hallgrimsson) (03/31/86)

Has anyone not co-located with the Reed community done development 
in Rascal? I don't have a stake in porting C or Pascal programs, so I'
m considering Rascal because of its Mac integration.  Specifically, I 
want to program the free-form sound generator.

Is Rascal sufficiently documented and supported?  I'm just wondering if I
would find myself restricted in what I could accomplish with it given that I
don't have access to the Reed Rascal hacker community.

	(Reed folks: I'm impressed with the functionality of the Rascal
programs that I've gotten from the net.  I just want to know if anyone has
accomplished that sort of thing working from only the stuff mail-ordered
from Metaresearch.)

	Eirikur Hallgrimsson
	...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!eirikur

briand@tekig4.UUCP (Brian Diehm) (04/01/86)

>Has anyone not co-located with the Reed community done development 
>in Rascal?  Is Rascal sufficiently documented and supported?

Yes, I have used Rascal to develop usable applications!  I recommend it very
enthusiastically.

The documentation from MetaResearch (Reed, actually) is VERY complete and
easily understandable.  It is written in a plain and easily-understood style.
While I cannot claim that I did everything without help from Reed, in actual
fact the questions I asked were more to do with the vagaries of Inside Mac
than with Rascal; the Rascal part gave me no trouble.  Anyway, if IM were
written as well as the Rascal documentation, your Aunt May could MacHack!

I've said it here before and I'll say it again - compared with either Neon or
Aztec C, Rascal is a breath of fresh air when it comes to ease of use and
learning the environment.

The Rascal system currently has some limitations.  It can only produce 32K
applications right now.  I don't know how close they are to distributing the
system with memory management that allows larger applications.  However, I
have written a pretty complete application (an icon editor for non-Mac icons)
in 16K.

For $129, Rascal is an absolute STEAL!

Finally, here's the special offer.  For anyone curious about Rascal, I will
upon email request send the above-mentioned application in BinHex4.0, and in
plain text the two source files that made it.  The application is specialized;
you won't find it useful per se, but it is an excellent demonstration of the
power available with Rascal, and the soure code should be pretty obvious,
especially with a copy of IM.

-Brian Diehm
Tektronix, Inc.  (SDA - Standard Disclaimers Apply:  Neither I nor Tektronix
                  have any formal connection to either Reed or MetaResearch,
                  and the above opinions are solely my own and do not
                  necessarily reflect the views of the staff or management of
                  Tektronix, and on and on and on ... )