Barry_Cornelius@durham.ac.UK (03/19/88)
Does anyone have any experience with the JPI Modula-2 system available from Jensens and Partners International (JPI) Ltd., 63 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1M 5NP. Phone +44 1 253 4333. It "runs on all IBM PCs and compatibles, including the Amstrad 1512 and 1640. Requires 512KB RAM". I believe it retails in the UK for 80 UK pounds. == Barry Cornelius == Address: Computer Science Group, School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Durham, Durham, DH1 3LE, England Telephone: My office: Durham (091 or +44 91) 374 2638 Secretary: Durham (091 or +44 91) 374 2630 Fax: Durham (091 or +44 91) 374 3740 Electronic Mail Addresses: JANET: Barry_Cornelius@uk.ac.dur.mts Internet: Barry_Cornelius%mts.dur.ac.uk@cunyvm.cuny.edu UUCP: ...ukc!cs.nott.ac.uk!bjc BITNET/EARN: Barry_Cornelius%DUR.MTS@AC.UK
rion@wdl1.UUCP (Rion Cassidy) (08/17/88)
Does anybody have any experience with JPI (Jensen Partners
International) Modula-2?
The latest issue of CACM has an ad for JPI M-2 that makes the usual
claims about being significantly faster than the competition,
reasonably priced, and quoting a reviewer who had some praise for the
product.
But has anybody out there in netland actually been using it? What are
the pros and cons of JPI M-2?
Rion Cassidy
Ford Aerospace
** PLEASE REPLY TO: **
rion@ford-wdl1.arpa
...{sgi,sun,ucbvax}!wdl1!rion
My other computer is a Cray.
Programmers go down faster.jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle) (08/17/88)
I have TopSpeed Modula-2, from Jensen and Partners, and am using it
to generate code for downloading into a CuBIT all-CMOS V40-based single-board
computer. With about twenty lines of modification to the run-time system
(for which source is available for $50), I was able to make this work.
This is a rather specialized application, but one which few mainstream
compiler vendors support at all. This product has sufficient tools to make
it possible. Some familiarity with 808x assembler is required for such
embedded systems work. But once the startup routines are working,
it should be possible to do everything else in Modula-2.
Those with more mundane applications should be able to use this
system with no difficulty. On a PC, everything works out of the box.
The compiler appears generally acceptable. It compiles fast, produces
few spurious diagnostics, generates reasonable code, and comes with a
Turbo-type environment. Separate compilation and automatic make are
properly supported. Graphics and windowing packages are provided, but are
mutually exclusive. The run-time checks work properly and interact properly
with the development environment. In general, a nice package, superior
to, say, Lattice C in usability and polish.
There is no debugger as yet, not that you should need one given a
solid Modula-2 system. But one has been announced for the fall.
It's a cheap system. Under $100 for the compiler alone, $50 extra
for the library sources, embedded-system tools, and such. Educational
bulk discounts are available to obtain prices comparable to Logitech's.
John Naglewieland@ea.ecn.purdue.edu (Jeffrey J Wieland) (08/22/88)
It might interest you to know that JPI Modula-2 is the M2 compiler that was developed by/for Borland for MS-DOS machines. When Borland decided not to market it, its developers took it on themselves to market it. Jeff Wieland wieland@ecn.purdue.edu
sullivan@marge.math.binghamton.edu (fred sullivan) (08/28/88)
Can anyone tell me if JPI Modula-2 handles I/O redirection properly? Logitech Modula-2 cannot detect end-of-file on console input, and the system HANGS if end-of-file is reached on standard input which has been redirected to a disk file. (I am aware of the technical reasons for this, and I know how to write a module to fix it. I am also aware that using redirection provided by the operating system may not be quite fit the usual (I hesitate to say standard) way of doing things, but so much the worse for the usual way.) I was also appalled to discover that with Logitech Modula-2, standard input and output are unbuffered, even if redirected to a disk file. Try running the obvious program to copy input to output on a 300K file (but not if you're in a hurry). This problems, together with the blazing speed of the Logitech compiler have kept me writing in Turbo-C, although I really prefer Modula-2. I'm hoping that JPI Modula-2 is just what I want. Fred Sullivan SUNY at Binghamton Dept. Math. Sciences Binghamton, NY 13903 sullivan@marge.math.binghamton.edu First you make a roux!
jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle) (08/30/88)
JPI Modula-II does offer buffering on file I/O, although the user must
supply the buffer by calling AssignBuffer.
I have been able, in JPI Modula II, to write interrupt routines for
a board-level system (a CuBIT 8400) without writing any assembly code.
Few other language systems are able to support such low-level processing
so well. I am very pleased with this system.
John Nagle