K538915@CZHRZU1A.BITNET (05/15/86)
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Date: 15 May 1986, 12:07:41 GMT
From: Simon Poole K538915 at CZHRZU1A
To: INFO-ATA at SU-SCORE
Please discard this message, I'm just trying this out.
Simon.K538915@CZHRZU1A.BITNET (08/19/86)
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Date: 19 August 1986, 15:43:57 GMT
From: Simon Poole K538915 at CZHRZU1A
To: INFO-ATARI16 at SU-SCORE
Subj.: TDI-Modula II/Key Caps/VT100 Emulator
I. TDI Modula II
Yesterday afternoon we received 12 1040 ST's at our institute, which
are intended to be used as terminals (and to provide some local processing
power). As a programming language we decided to try out the new version of
TDI's Modula II. I spent last evening playing around with it and since I
can compare it with the old release, its probably a good idea to do a short
review.
To start with the positive things: the handbook is better, in an appendix
there is a short explantion of Transfer and IOTransfer (but no working
examples) and it seems to go a bit more in to the details of the
implementation. There are some things missing like good configurations for work
with the ramdisk.
There are a BIOS and XBIOS interface included in the libary now and if
you buy the toolkit you get some higher level GEM routines plus the
MegaMax resource construction program, a GEM version of the ETH debugger
and the Versions of the ETH sym and lnk file decoder.
So after a look in the handbook and the moving of all the files to a
double sided diskette, I decided to compile the sample definition and
implementation modules on the disk. I started the ramdisk that comes with the
package and copied all files except the ramdisk and the options accessory to
it. I made the ramdisk 700 kB large, that did leave some free space on the
disk. To set the search paths for the compiler, editor, linker and debugger
(if you have the toolkit) you use the options desk accessory, it allows you to
set 4 directorys to be searched for files in the order you specify:
Example: 1 D:
2 D:GEMLIB
3 D:STDLIB
4 A:
Additionlly you can set compiler and linker options, like dump,debug,optimize,
but there is no way to save these settings to disk. The desk accessory does
look at a file to determine the default pathes when it is booted, but you have
to create this file with a separate editor. So after setting these options I
started the Modula desktop program. It looked quite nice, with icons to start
the compiler etc. but where were my sample files? Acording to the handbook they
should have been listed with name and an icon for every type of file (mod,def,
lnk,sym,prg). Ok they were in a folder, so there should be a possibilty to
change the path for the source, but it dosen't seem as the option program can
set this path. So I copied the sample files in to the main directory and erased
the folder. Back in the desktop program, hey presto, there were the icons. To
start the compiler (linker etc.) you click in the field where you would like
to create a file, so to create the sym file of a definition module TEST you
click in the row with TEST as name and in the column under SYM. I did this
for all definition files on the disk, the compilation speed doesn't seem
different to the old version and then I compiled the implementation module
of the main progam. Result: 4 BOMBS, probably the compiler ran out of stack,
but errors like this one MUST be trapped for the compiler to be of any use.
Writing the VT100/Tek4010 emulator with CCD/OSS pascal this happened to me once
in 4 weeks and then I was at least using a more obscure feature than just
compiling a program. Well at least I didn't have to reboot.
After this experience I decided to write a small program of the 'Hello
World' type to test the rest of the system. To create a new file in the desktop
you have to start the editor by double clicking the editor icon, this works
but the desktop does seem a bit unresponsive to the mouse button. The editor
does have more functions than the old one and it does create a proper end of
file now even if the eof marker isn't on a line alone. But otherwise it still
is utterly useless except for correcting errors, my god have they never seen
GST-Edit? The cursor movement and delete functions are slower than my terminal
emulator on a 9600 baud line using VM/CMS on an overloaded 3083. I wonder how
they delete, bit for bit perhaps? Leaving the editor is still funny, if I
remember correctly the old version always stoped saving a file, now you
have to save the file salect abandon and click cancel on the file selector
dialog that pops up then.
Otherwise it is quite straightforward to compile and link a small program.
When you leave the editor you click under prg and it automaticallys compiles
and links the file. To run it, you have to select Execute Program from a drop-
down menu, TOS or TTP programs can't be started this way because there is no
way of renaming a file from the desktop.
Summary: well I haven't done any serious work with TDI's Modula and as long
as the desktop dosen't get better I don't intend to. TDI do have
good ideas, they are just implemented so bad I can't belive it
(an other example the desktop itself is drawn exactly one pixel
to high, that means it gets messed up every time you use a drop-
down menu).
What really makes me furious is that the compiler itself is
probably very much the original multipass compiler used for work
on the Lilith computer at the ETH Zuerich and of all adaptions of
that compiler TDI's is the worst.
The original compiler ran on PDP-11 with RT-11 and two friends
of mine fixed it to work with RT-11 V0.5, except when fiddling
with the actually kernal of the compiler it never died on them!!!!
I know this is rather destuctive, but this product is buggy and unfinished,
but you have to pay money for it and I think you should know what to expect!
II Key caps
As I said, we are using the ST's mainly as terminals and this leads to one
problem: we would like to use a US querty keyboard layout (if you have ever
seen the german keyboard you know why). The general distributer in Switzerland
flatly denied even the existence of different versions then what we get here.
Loading a different keyboard table is no problem, but if possible we would like
to avoid sticking labels on the keys. Does anyone know if you can get sets of
replacement key caps and has anyone actually changed them?
III PD VT100/Tek4010 emulator
The terminal emulator is finished and I will send the uuencoded executable
and documentation to anybody who asks, but I will not post 100kB worth of files
to the net if nobody wants the program (the response to my last posting was
1 piece of mail).
Simon Poole
Institute of Physics of the University Zuerich
'just an excuse to play with computers the whole day'K538915@CZHRZU1A.BITNET (08/22/86)
OPTIONS: ACK LOG LONG NOTEBOOK ALL
Date: 22 August 1986, 10:11:16 GMT
From: Simon Poole K538915 at CZHRZU1A
To: INFO-ATA at SU-SCORE
Subj. My comments on TDI Modula II
Ooops, you can get out of the Modula II editor easier than I claimed.
Select CLOSE in the drop-down menu. The editor then saves and presents
the file-selector dialog. I played around with the debugger last
night and I needed only 60s to crash it, TDI what about debugging the
debugger? I do like Modula II by the way and I'm just waiting for a good
implementation on the ST.
Simon Poole.