alice@looking.UUCP (12/12/86)
Warning: The following is a commercial product announcement by a company on the net. In keeping with net concensus, it will be done only once. If you have moral objections, stop reading now! ==================================================================== Looking Glass Software has released ALICE:The Personal Pascal for the Atari ST. ALICE is a system that makes Pascal programming interactive, error-free, easier to do and easier to learn. It has been available on the IBM-PC for some time. The Atari ST version contains all the PC version does plus a nice GEM interface and more. ALICE features a syntax-directed complete programming environment that is particularly good for learning and prototyping. It consists of an integrated template-driven syntax directed editor with a Pascal interpreter and debugging facilities. A syntax directed editor is an editor that intimately knows the syntax of a language. You edit your programs as program trees instead of dealing with them as text. New structures are built by filling in the blanks in templates. Among other things, it's impossible to make a syntax error in such a system. The ALICE editor is fully integrated with the GEM environment. ALICE is very good for learning (a textbook is available) but net readers may be more interested in ALICE's special debug and GEM interface features. The interpreter provides for interactive programming with all the debug features that a compiler can't provide. A powerful variable trace is also included. ALICE's GEM interface makes writing full GEM applications easy, even for beginners. Menus, graphics, multiple windows, alerts, the mouse and more can all be used independently in short programs. No large skeleton program is required. With ALICE, you can open a window like a file and 'writeln' to it. ALICE worries about scrolling, clipping, redrawing and all window events that you don't ask to be told about. ALICE is, among other things, a great system for interactively playing with GEM. ALICE's Pascal language includes all applicable extensions of Turbo Pascal. Many Turbo Pascal programs can be moved over to the ST easily. ALICE can also be used in conjunction with Pascal compilers like OSS Pascal. I won't go into major details here to avoid offending the net. You can mail for more full information, or if requested, I will post it to the net. Here is a short list of some of the notable features of the system: o Multi-level UNDO/REDO o Symbol name completion o Menu of possible input at any point o Edit multiple programs o Colour to display semantic info o code "hiding" o Entry-time semantic error detection o All action from menus if desired o Use of uninitialized variables, bad array indices etc. detected o Motion picture execution mode o Macros for customization o Programmable editor (In Pascal!) o Over 700 help screens o Help on all commands, errors, built-in routines and features of Pascal o Free sample multi-window paint program source included ========================================================================= Order by sending $79.95 plus $5 for shipping and handling to: Looking Glass Software Limited 124 King St. N. Waterloo, Ontario N2J 2X8 Or phone 519/884-7473 collect. Have Visa or MasterCard ready. If you trust your credit card number to the net, you can email your order. Price in $US. Canadians remit $109.95 CDN + $3 for shipping. Ontario residents add 7% P.S.T. Textbook is $19.95 extra, $27.50 in Canada. Alice runs on any ST except a 520ST without TOS-in-ROM. ========================================================================= Non-Standard Non-disclaimer: I am affiliated in every way with Looking Glass Software, and this posting does reflect the official views of the company! GEM is a trademark of Digital Research Atari ST is a trademark of Atari Corp. IBM-PC is a trademark of International Business Machines. Turbo Pascal is a trademark of Borland International. ALICE:The Personal Pascal is a trademark of Graham Software Corp used with permission.
rs4u#@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Richard Siegel) (12/14/86)
[Line-Eater? What Line-Eater? *Chomp* 8-) ]
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Position: Confused Undergraduate
Sounds nice, but how fast is the compiler?
I use Lightspeed Pascal on the Macintosh, and while it doesn't offer all the
whizzy features of Alice, it is a damn nice compiler, the speed of which I
have not seen anywhere else on any machine...
And no, I am not affiliated with THINK Technologies in any way shape or form,
save as a happy user.
--Rich
Richard M. Siegel
Arpanet: rs4u@andrew.cmu.edu (the only way to get to me!)
Uucp: {your fave gateway}!seismo!andrew.cmu.edu!rs4u
Disclaimer --> Disclaimers are bogus. brad@looking.UUCP (12/14/86)
In article <MS.V3.18.rs4u.80021103.harrisburg.ibm032.726.8@andrew.cmu.edu> rs4u#@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Richard Siegel) writes: > >Sounds nice, but how fast is the compiler? Sorry about the confusion. Alice does not contain a compiler. It is a programming environment with an interpreter. While the interpreter is naturally slower at running programs, the idea is that you develop and test with the interpreter, then pick 'compile' off the menu and it calls your Pascal compiler on your program. In your configuration file you specify where your compiler is and how to call it. You don't need a compiler for many programs. Programs that are keyboard bound (or event bound, as many GEM programs are) usually work just fine. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
bob@hcrvax.UUCP (Bob Kyryliuk) (12/19/86)
In article <715@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes: >In article <MS.V3.18.rs4u.80021103.harrisburg.ibm032.726.8@andrew.cmu.edu> rs4u#@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Richard Siegel) writes: >> >>Sounds nice, but how fast is the compiler? > >Sorry about the confusion. Alice does not contain a compiler. It is >a programming environment with an interpreter. While the interpreter >is naturally slower at running programs, the idea is that you develop >and test with the interpreter, then pick 'compile' off the menu and it >calls your Pascal compiler on your program. Since the ISO/ANSI Pascal Standards (as well as Jensen & Wirth) leave a number of fundamental items to be incorporated as extensions, and since many current compilers and interpreters implement these extensions in different ways I have a question on the practicality of the above suggestion. Does the use of the ALICE environment require the programmer to "port" his programs (from ALICE to the compiler he is really going to use to run his application) every time he wants to test his application on his compiler, and then "re-port" his program back (from his compiler's syntax to ALICE) every time he wants to do "development"? > ALICE's Pascal language includes all applicable extensions of Turbo Pascal. > Many Turbo Pascal programs can be moved over to the ST easily. ALICE can > also be used in conjunction with Pascal compilers like OSS Pascal. If you had a Turbo Pascal Compiler and ALICE on the same machine, incompatible interpreters and compilers would not be a problem since ALICE is claimed to have the Turbo Pascal extensions (plus perhaps others). However, the most common pascal compiler for the ST appears to be OSS Pascal (correct me if I'm wrong), which has a different set of extensions from Turbo Pascal. I would assume that Brad's mention of using ALICE "in conjunction" with OSS Pascal to mean that there is compatibility only as far as perhaps standard Pascal, which has numerous deficiencies as mentioned earlier. This would seem to leave you in a bind of some sort until ALICE grew OSS Pascal extensions, or Turbo Pascal became available on the ST. >You don't need a compiler for many programs. Although in an educational environment, an interpreter may be good enough for student programming, in the commercial world of hundred thousand line applications, the bottom line is execution performance and a compiler is often essential. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bob Kyryliuk Software Products Manager HCR Corporation [decvax,ihnp4]!utzoo!hcr!bob