mg@cs.Princeton.EDU (Michael Golan) (08/18/90)
I borrowed a Zortech C++ 2.06 (legally!) and played with
It for a few hours. I found many problems, including:
1) Bad definition in dos.h wont allow sample programs to compile:
#define dos_exterror((t)) dos_exterr((t))
2) Bad english/syntax (So is mind, but :-) in the installation program
3) ZTCHELP window size is fixed. There is no way to access the text with
another program, nor any search facility. Also, the program can not be
run in non-TSR mode. (Compare with MS Quick Help).
4) The sample programs readme file was confusing, referring to files left on
the disk and XCOPY (which is no longer true, since files on the disks are
packed) MENU.EXE did not exist, for example. I finally figured how to
compile demo (found the .mak file).
5) The clock TSR froze the system under Desqview. TZCHELP seems to have the
same effect, though not immediately... The demos in general are ugly and
have too few C++ code (and too much C).
6) Finally, moving from MS-C seems to require a lot of work, and the
documentation does not help at all (excusing itself as if Microsoft
produces a new version every week). Some UNIX/MS-C compile options
are missing. Most notably -X
I wonder ... has this all been fixed in the newer versions (2.1?) Anyone would
like to comment about how this compiler works with large programs (over 20K
lines of code)? Do people generally feel C++ on MSDOS is at a high enough
level now for real work, or is it just a toy for now, waiting MS-C++ and
3rd party libraries/utilities?
Thanks
Michael Golan
mg@princeton.edu