[net.micro.mac] Macintosh Revealed, possible C header files

gnu@l5.uucp (John Gilmore) (09/27/85)

In article <1516@cbosgd.UUCP>, db@cbosgd.UUCP (J. Muir) writes:
> I purchased MR Vol II at MACWORLD Expo and got a chance to talk to
> Steve C. as he was autographing my copy (eat your hearts out!).
> On behalf of all C programmers out there, I submitted a plea for an
> addendum volume containing the interface descriptions and some examples
> in C.  On behalf of myself, I answered the "which dialect" question
> with "Aztec C" (sorry Mac C and Megamax owners).

It's hard to believe that any three products that call themselves
"C" (and get away with it) and compile for the same machine can't be
made to compile the same source and get it to run correctly.  Unless
I (or they) are totally off the wall, a set of include files or manuals
for the Mac interfaces should be pretty easy to write portably.

(Of course there will be a few things that need #ifdef-ing, like in
any modern-day portable C program...unfortunate but true.)

If the problem is that each C vendor provided Mac interfaces but named
them all differently, a set of public domain #include files that translated
one set of names to the other would be easy to produce, making it possible
to port something that had been written for a different interface library.

barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin) (10/03/85)

In article <161@l5.uucp> gnu@l5.uucp (John Gilmore) writes:
>It's hard to believe that any three products that call themselves
>"C" (and get away with it) and compile for the same machine can't be
>made to compile the same source and get it to run correctly.  Unless
>I (or they) are totally off the wall, a set of include files or manuals
>for the Mac interfaces should be pretty easy to write portably.

I don't know too many details, but I believe that various Mac C
compilers have different strategies for dealing with the problem of
toolbox routines that expect Pascal-style strings.  Some require the
programmer to do the conversion, while others attempt to do the
conversion automatically.
-- 
    Barry Margolin
    ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics
    UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar