[comp.lang.pascal] TP Developer's Tool Kit -- Early Comments

lowey@sask.UUCP (Kevin Lowey) (03/02/88)

Hi,

  I just received my copy of the Turbo Pascal Developer's tool kit
yesterday.  For those who don't know, the entire developer's kit
consists of the Graphics, Database, Editor, Numerical Methods and 
Games tool boxes, as well as Turbo Tutor.

  I've taken a very brief look at the programs.  I owned the Database and
Graphics toolboxes previously, so I can make some comparisons directly.  

  Comparing the two toolboxes I already owned, it looks like the main goal
was software compatibility between older versions of the tool boxes and newer
versions.  There don't appear to be a lot of new features.  

  I'm expecially disappointed in the Graphics tool kit.  It supports the 
same devices as the GRAPH unit in Turbo 4.0, but the graphics tool kit 
uses all its own drivers.  The good points to this is speed and compatibility
with older toolboxes.  However, I was hoping that the toolbox would use
the device independant features of the new GRAPH unit so I could have one
device independant program which would load in the desired drivers at run
time.  As it stands, I still have to distribute seperate copies of the 
program for each graphics card I wish to support, instead of just seperate
driver files.  

  I'm thinking of writing my own version of the device specific routines 
which use the .BGI calls.  It may have to be a bit incompatible, but I
think it can be done. (Don't hold your breath or send messages asking me
to send it to you, I'll announce if and when it is finished.)

  On the other hand, the Editor tool box looks Great.  By adding only 14K 
to my program, I can have the entire Turbo editor, just like you 
see it in Turbo Pascal, Sidekick, Turbo C, etc.  It makes text data entry
a snap.  

  The database toolkit looks almost identical to the older versions.  There
are a few utility programs to help customize the toolbox for your specific
data, but the actual toolbox looks the same.  

  The numerical methods programs look ok.  I didn't have the old version,
so I can't compare.  It appears that their demo programs use the Graphics
Tool Kit, so they had to distribute a few versions (One for Herc and one for
CGA) for people to experiment with. 

  The manuals are much better.  They are patterned after the new Turbo 
Pascal manual.  One thing they all miss is a section stating the differences
between older versions and the new version.  This is probably because from a
programmer's viewpoint, there is no difference.  The routines all work the 
same as the older versions did.  The differences are in the implementation,
not the interface to the programmer (sounds like Units doesn't it :-)

  Anyway, enough of my rambling.  If I find any hidden gotchas or goodies,
I'll post more info to the net.  I'm taking my old manuals home to 
compare the functions with the new manuals tonight.  I don't have any large
applications to do benchmarks on right now, so I'll leave that to someone 
else.

Hope you enjoyed my "First Impressions"
______________________________________________________________________________
| Kevin Lowey                    |The above is the personal opinion of Kevin |
| University of Saskatchewan     |Lowey.  It does not reflect the position of|
| Computing Services             |the University of Saskatchewan in any way. |
| SaskTel: (306) 966-4826        |                                           |
| Bitnet:LOWEY@SASK. (preferred) |I am in no way affiliated with any of the  |
| UUCP:    ihnp4!sask!lowey.uucp |above mentioned companies other than U of S|
|________________________________|___________________________________________|