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| |________________________________|___________________________________________|