rce229@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (02/05/88)
I am fairly familiar with Turbo Pascal for MS-DOS. Does anyone have any comments on Lightspeed Pascal vs. Turbo Pascal on the Macintosh? Reply in mail and I'll summarize responses later.
steve@hpiacla.HP.COM (Steve Witten) (02/11/88)
I have Turbo Pascal for the Mac. I think that you would be better off with LSP.
Turbo Pascal DOES NOT work with MultiFinder. When I called Borland to find out
when they were going to fix it, their response was "We don't know, maybe never."
As I found out with my Reflex -> Reflex Plus upgrade, Borland sells you stuff
real cheap but they often make you pay up the nose for upgrades -- sometimes to
fix their own bugs. BTW, Reflex Plus doesn't work with MultiFinder either and
I am wondering how much it is going to cost me to upgrade to a version that
does.
I used to think Borland was doing us all a real favor by producing quality
software at a low price but it seems they've gotten a bad case of the dreaded
Microsoft disease. When I get a fixed-up version of Reflex Plus, I am no longer
going to deal with them.
On the other hand, I have received two FREE upgrades to LSC. Mr. Siegel often
posts fixes and requests for enhancements to the net. They seem to go out of
their way to solicit and honor user input.
You are probably looking for a more technical evaluation. I would say that most
Pascal's for the Mac are pretty much the same in terms of features because Lisa
Pascal set the standard and MPW Pascal maintains it...
===============================================================================
Steve Witten
Industrial Applications Center {ucbvax, hplabs}!hpda!hpdsla!hpiacla!steve
Hewlett-Packard Co. steve@hpiacla.HP.COM
"...Did you trade a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?..."rs4u+@andrew.cmu.edu (Richard Siegel) (02/12/88)
A crude technical Pascal comparison:
Unless otherwise noted, all mentioned compilers support the ISO Pascal
standard and are *mostly* compatible with Lisa Pascal.
MPW Pascal (Apple Computer): Features greatest conformance with Lisa Pascal
standards; offers Object Pascal with MacApp support; offers compilation for
68020 and 68881 processors. Supports use of Macsbug for machine-level
debugging. "Make" facility provided for project management. MultiFinder
compatible.
Lightspeed Pascal (THINK Technologies): Features fast compilation and linkage
of programs. No 68020 or 68881 support, no Object Pascal. Not completely
source-compatible with MPW Pascal. Project management facility provides for
automatic project management with no user intervention. Features symbolic
source-level debugger with step, trace, breakpoint, expression evaluation, and
runtime execution of code fragments. Supports use of Macsbug for machine-level
debugging. Not MultiFinder compatible.
Turbo Pascal (Borland International): Features fast compilation and linkage of
programs. No 68020 or 68881 support, no Object Pascal. Supports use of Macsbug
for machine-level debugging, and runtime recovery from system errors. No
project management provided. Not MultiFinder compatible.
TML Pascal (TML Systems): First native-code Pascal compiler for Mac. Separate
components (Editor, compiler, linker). Supports Object Pascal but will not
compile MacApp sources. Supports 68881 through library routines; no inline
support offered. MultiFinder compability unknown. Supports use of Macsbug for
machine-level debugging. No project management provided.
This isn't an endorsement of any compiler, and I tried very hard not to make
it a brazen plug for Lightspeed Pascal. :-)
--Rich
===================================================================
Richard Siegel
THINK Technologies, QA Technician (on leave)
The opinions stated here do not represent the policies
of THINK Technologies or of Carnegie-Mellon University.
Arpa: rs4u@andrew.cmu.edu
UUCP: {decvax,ucbvax,sun}!andrew.cmu.edu!rs4u
==================================================================drc@dbase.UUCP (Dennis Cohen) (02/14/88)
I agree with you re the quality of Rich's support; however, you should be made aware that LSP is NOT MultiFinder compatible either. It suffers a severe crash if you try to use it in that environment. Having dealt with both companies, I tend to prefer Think's upgrade policy with regard to maintenance releases, but I don't know what impact their acquisition by Symantec will make to these policies. When I asked the folks at Borland about the MF incompatibility, I got the response that they were working on it (the same answer I got from the authors of LSP). Under MF, I cannot see any reason to use LSP over Turbo since its major (indeed only) advantage is the source-level debugging and that is gone. If you're always going to be creating a disk file and running from there, I think Turbo comes out way ahead because you don't need to deal with that (expletive-deleted) editor in LSP. Dennis Cohen (The above are my opinions) Ashton-Tate Glendale Development Center dBASE Mac Development Team
atchison@hpindda.HP.COM (Lee Atchison) (02/17/88)
/ hpindda:comp.sys.mac / drc@dbase.UUCP (Dennis Cohen) / 11:44 am Feb 13, 1988 / >comes out way ahead because you don't need to deal with that (expletive-deleted) >editor in LSP. I've heard this comment a number of times. Having only used Turbo Pascal, (which also has an integrated editor), what is wrong with the LSP editor? Is it worse than the TP editor, or simply worse then super-fancy, lots-of- money, hi-tech editors? I happen to like the Turbo Pascal editor, is the LSP editor as good as/worse than/better than this? -lee ---- Lee Atchison Hewlett Packard, Information Networks Division atchison%hpindda@hplabs.hp.com
jmm@thoth8.berkeley.edu (;;;;0000) (02/18/88)
The LSP editor has several problems:
1. Doesn't support arrow keys.
2. The search/replace procedure doesn't allow searches across multiple files.
3. Windows don't have a zoom box (or equivalent) function.
4. Only eight files can be open at the same time. (This isn't major)
Also, the editor strictly enforces Think's style. After you type a
return, enter, or semicolon, the editor will reformat your code, no
matter how you typed it in the first place. I like this feature, as I
don't worry at all about things like indentation when I'm typing or
removing blocks of code. On the down side, Think's idea of Pascal
style is strange and adds unneccessary levels of indentation. For
example, Think's if..then statements look like:
if true then
begin
DoStuff;
DoMoreStuff;
end;
MoreStatements;
The editor will also boldface all keywords (procedure, begin, end...).
This is a problem when printing, as LSP insists on printing them as
boldface also, which takes more time. I solve the 'problem' by using
a DA to print rather than the LSP function.
/ James Moore / | jmm@bartleby.berkeley.edu
/ / |--------------------------------------------|
/ Ma ta Gaeilge agut, / | Nil aon speis ag Ollscoile na |
/ scriobh i! / | California im bharulacha fein. |jnh@ece-csc.UUCP (Joseph Nathan Hall) (02/18/88)
*** EAT THIS ***
In reference to LSP's editor, it's, well, OK. I personally think Lightspeed
Pascal is the language of choice on the Mac. (Don't ask me why. I generally
prefer "C.") But the editor is aggravating at first. Why?
1) The arrow keys don't work. I loathe, repeat, *LOATHE* having to move
the cursor with the mouse. Years of editing on "normal" editors and 80 wpm
typing skills make me strongly prefer moving a text cursor with keys, rather
than a mouse.
2) Auto-indent and auto-highlight ("pretty printing") is nice, I guess, but
the LSP editor doesn't use my preferred style of Pascal indentation. I'm
used to interactive formatting from emacs et al., but LSP's editor doesn't
support any of the "Electric C - like" features that make emacs so much fun.
(Like showing matching parentheses and other delimiters, for example.) You're
stuck, basically, with their non-tweakable, non-shutoffable pretty-printing
editor, which would really piss me off if I didn't think that it was basically
OK, which I do. But I can sympathize with anyone who doesn't like it.
3) Some other "features" of LSP also annoy me. Restricting comments to one
line, I think, is stupid. I'm not one to leave huge blocks of commented-out
code in my programs during development, but it's nice to have the option.
LSP doesn't let you use a) two separate styles of comment marker or b)
put comments inside lines either (it helpfully moves them to the end of
the line if you try).
Now that I think about it, another annoying "feature" of the pretty-printer
is that it enforces the "one statement per line" rule. This isn't so bad
as long as you're concerned about violating the rule in the more-than-one-
statement-per-line direction. But it's *extremely* annoying when you're
creating long statements and have to use horizontal scrolling to look at
them. So annoying that I waste time trying to avoid creating long statements.
Why can't the editor let you break a statement into two or three or however
many lines?
However...
I still love LSP. I'm sure it will improve.
I haven't seen or tried MPW Pascal, by the way. Anyone who's used both
willing to offer a comparison?
-joseph
/*
* What, me worry? 16 days till I get married and you want me to worry?
*/
*** EAT THIS ***gaines@calgary.UUCP (Brian Gaines) (02/20/88)
In article <4860004@hpiacla.HP.COM>, steve@hpiacla.HP.COM (Steve Witten) writes: > I have Turbo Pascal for the Mac. I think that you would be better off with LSP. > Turbo Pascal DOES NOT work with MultiFinder. When I called Borland to find out Turbo is OK under MultiFinder. The old release has a problem on the Mac II in that it crashes if you attempt to run your program within Turbo. This is related to the Mac II, not MultiFinder. Compilation and running the compiled file is fine on the Mac II. I use Turbo under MultiFinder on SE and Mac II without problems, compiling in Turbo, switching to Finder and running compiled file without quitting Turbo, and then switching back to source files in Turbo. This gets around bug on Mac II and is a very fast and effective development environment. My typical programs are 250K long in compiled form with some 10 units. I move them to MPW, commenting out the unit numbers, and compile them with 68020 and 68881 switches for fast running on Mac II. The compatability is fine. The new release of Turbo announced some 6 weeks ago supports the 256K roms and gets rid of the bug. I ordered it from Borland on release and still do not have it. Their order processing could do with speed-up but their technology is fine. Brian Gaines, gaines@calgary.cdn, (403) 220-5901
gaines@calgary.UUCP (Brian Gaines) (02/20/88)
In article <6500019@hpindda.HP.COM>, atchison@hpindda.HP.COM (Lee Atchison) writes: > / hpindda:comp.sys.mac / drc@dbase.UUCP (Dennis Cohen) / 11:44 am Feb 13, 1988 / > >comes out way ahead because you don't need to deal with that (expletive-deleted) > >editor in LSP. > > I've heard this comment a number of times. Having only used Turbo Pascal, > (which also has an integrated editor), what is wrong with the LSP editor? LSP Editor reformats your source file in its own 'prettyprint' format and you cannot prevent this. For those who have programmed in Pascal for years and have their own style it is quite unusable. It is not a matter of 'taste' as Andrew says, but a matter of arrogance, of imposing a source format style upon the user who has very good reasons for preferring their own. Otherwise it is a very nice compiler with an excellent symbolic debug and automatic 'make' facility which are valuable and not available in Turbo. LSP have probably lost many potential customers through their editor - they may have gained others! > > I happen to like the Turbo Pascal editor, is the LSP editor as good as/worse > than/better than this? The Turbo editor is simple but effective with a good standard Mac user interface. It does not attempt any 'intelligent(?)' formatting of your source files. The MPW editor is similar but more powerful because of the MPW shell facilities in which it is embedded. It is easy to write large systems that migrate between all three compilers provide you do not use any of their idiosynchratic features (eg '+' for string concatenation in Turbo) and look out for minor semantic inconsistencies (eg 'Copy' in MPW returns a null string if you ask for more characters than the original string whereas most Pascals return the original string. I have not used TML Pascal for a while but had no difficulty migrating some large programs from it to Turbo when Turbo came out. It would be useful to get a definitive list of the differences between these compilers as many programmers will need to move source between them from time to time. I would be happy to collect those people have found if they mail direct to me, and then post the collection. Brian Gaines, gaines@calgary.cdn (403) 220 5901 Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4 >
kushmer@bnlux1.bnl.gov (christopher kushmerick) (03/29/91)
Is there a turbo pascal version for the Mac? Are the run time library calls the same? Ie would a graphics intensive program compile and run on the mac with little effort. If no turbo pascal on the mac, then what pascal do people use on the Mac? Here is the deal: I have a couple of programs that I would like to offer for the mac. Currently they only run under msdos. They are written in turbo pascal, and use turbo pascal run time library calls for graphics. Any help is appreciated. -Chris -- Chris Kushmerick kciremhsuK sirhC kushmer@bnlux1.bnl.gov <===Try this one first kushmerick@pofvax.sunysb.edu
Richard K. Wolf <U42641@uicvm.uic.edu> (04/03/91)
In article <1991Mar28.211620.11901@bnlux1.bnl.gov>, kushmer@bnlux1.bnl.gov (christopher kushmerick) says: > >Is there a turbo pascal version for the Mac? Are the run time library >calls the same? Ie would a graphics intensive program compile and run >on the mac with little effort. > Yes, there is a version of Turbo Pascal for the Mac. Oddly enough, it is called "Turbo Pascal for the Mac" and is manufactured by Borland, just like the PC variety. Since the Mac has rich and varied graphics library built into its ROM, there are not a great many grapics libraries included with the basic package. If memory serves, you can get additional libraries from Borland. I'd recommend, however, that you take the time to learn the Mac user interface since IMHO not many users of your software will appreciate your product if it doesn't adhere very well to Apple's programming guidelines. >If no turbo pascal on the mac, then what pascal do people use on the Mac? > Even though there is a Turbo Pascal for the Mac, I nontheless recommend that you acquire another Pascal, such as THINK Pascal by Symmantec. Turbo Pascal has not kept pace with changes to the Mac for a while now. THINK Pascal is not that much more expensive than Turbo Pascal and is well worth the extra "buckage," as my brother would say, for the object oriented environment, if nothing else. >Here is the deal: I have a couple of programs that I would like to >offer for the mac. Currently they only run under msdos. They are written in >turbo pascal, and use turbo pascal run time library calls for graphics. > There is a book, written by Tom Swan, which I think you should have. It is called something like, "Programming the Mac with Turbo Pascal" and it contains a whole chapter devoted to translating PC Turbo Pascal into Mac Turbo Pascal. It also give a decent description of how the Mac is programmed. >Any help is appreciated. > >-Chris >-- >Chris Kushmerick kciremhsuK sirhC >kushmer@bnlux1.bnl.gov <===Try this one first >kushmerick@pofvax.sunysb.edu Good luck! ----- Richard K. Wolf U II C U n i v e r s i t y U42641@UICVM.BITNET U UU II CCC U42641@uicvm.uic.edu UU UU II CC C o f UU UU II CC UU UU II CC CC I l l i n o i s UUUU II CCCCC U I CC a t C h i c a g o
delliott@cec2.wustl.edu (Dave Elliott) (04/04/91)
Turbo Pascal for the Mac is now zombieware. It is not being sold, locally,
and in a phone call to Borland's support line it was suggested that I see
my university store or Egghead software to get one of the other Mac Pascals.
I bought Think Pascal, and pitched Turbo. Turbo Pascal usually bombs on
my 4 Mb Mac + under Multi-finder, or if various DA's (Macromaker, Flash-it,...)
are installed, and has some other problems, not serious, but which will
never be repaired.
David L. Elliott
Dept. of Systems Science and Mathematics
Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130
delliott@CEC2.WUSTL.EDU