bartz@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Bartz) (08/03/87)
< Food for hungry Line eaters> in article <418@esunix.UUCP>,bpendlet@esunix.UUCP (Bob Pendleton) asks: > But, how much memory does it require? How much disk >space does it use? What is their upgrade policy? How about bug fixes? What >about technical support? What kind of documentation is supplied? What >dealers are going to carry this product? Is it copy protected? How are >the manuals printed? Is it 2nd or 3rd edition Modula-2 or is it standards >committee Modula-2? I preface the below testimonial with the fact that while I am a beta tester for the compilier, I am in no other way connected with this product.(In other words they ain't payin' me nothin'.) I have had a copy of the compilier for a week or so now and am very impressed with it. I bought the TDI compiler (commercial version) when TDI first released one for the amiga, and let me tell you THERE IS A BIG DIFFERENCE !!! The most important thing I can say is that this beta test is better documented and has fewer bugs (no major ones that I found) than TDI's latest release. The work I have done with it so far is to port over my game GravityWars. (Remember that $5 you were going to send but never did. Four responces is all I have gotten.) The compiler is fast. Real fast. I run both compilers from recoverable ramdisk and the speed improvement in compiling is considerable. Not only does it compile faster, the code is 1/3 -1/2 smaller and the execution speed is enough faster that you can seen the difference in the speed of the missle trail. Btw the only changes made that were made were in the calls to the library functions. (yes this gives you access to the amiga functions.) While I don't know what the final docs will look like let me tell that the stuff I got was considerable. Talk about copy protection by good docs. The stuff I got was 3 to 4 inches thick, double sided laser printer output. And while it contained the stuff on the C libs/Simple mods/Iff extras, these were not as yet complete and so a lot was still missing. Speaking of copy protection there was none except the size of the manuals. (Unless you have controlling interest in Xerox, it just isn't worth it.) The extras even the basic system comes with are considerable. As I understand it (don't flame me if I'm wrong about this, it' s just the way I understand it) in addition to the compilier/linker/errlister you get a version of microGnuemacs from which you can compile, view errors, link and run your programs from. Even in a 512 system this can be done. The package comes with a disk already configured to do this. You just boot the disk and start writing code. You also get vdk, runback, (public/shareware stuff but usefull all the same) and qload. Qload is a neat arc like program that lets you load the libs into ramdisk in less than a minute. It's a drastic improvement over the 10 minutes or so it took me to load the TDI stuff. (The Tdi libs are much larger as well. But they contain little these libs do. Also these libs look more like the stuff in the RKM in in appearance.) Some other nice features are the assembly language interface and the fact that you can use a standard debugger like wack or metascope. (Wack is a debugger right? Never saw it myself.) Anyway to sum it all up I like it. (P.s. Yes a new Gravitywars is on the way. Those Four people who sent money get it for free.) Ed Bartz -- If any opinion I had was shared by my employers I be shocked. What's more so would they. ARPA: Bartz@ruthep.rutgers.edu UUCP: bartz@elbereth.uucp BITNET: bartz@ruthep.bitnet