ted@imsvax.UUCP (02/08/87)
Mystic Pascal is an immature product at this point, clearly not something you could replace your copy of Turbo with, but it is intriguing as hell and has very interesting possibilities when and if it does mature and is well worth the price merely as a look into the future. Tyson seems to have perfected the exotic aspects of it before making sure that more mundane things like eof() or recursion work all the time, present versions are limited to the ISO standard (things such as the string type are lacking), and the exotic features can't as yet be linked outside the compile-to- memory mode. I am looking foreward to version 1.7 (March) which he claims will fix these problems. The exotic features DO work: there is true multi- tasking, a "start" command for procedures, ques which procedures can read from and write to for synchronization, and a radically different kind of a graphics capability which would lend itself very readily to producing software with pan and zoom effects. This one, should it be perfected, could become a new standard for compilers; it is definitely not vapor-ware. Ted Holden, IMS