SULLIVAN@suny-bing.CSNET.UUCP (04/26/87)
Some time ago there were requests for Ace C. I wrote to the author
(Ralph Walden) about the status of Ace C. I will paraphrase his reply.
Deep Blue C was written by Jack Palevich and distributed by APX. When APX
died, J. P. gave Ralph Walden permission to place into the public domain an
improved version. This version is Ace C. R. W. made further improvements,
and released DVC/65 (not in the public domain!) In the meantime Antic
bought the APX inventory and started distributing Deep Blue C again. "Due
to heavy piracy" (R. W.'s words) R. W. was not able to make any money from
DVC/65 and sold the rights to Clearstar Technology. They are now selling it
as Lightspeed C. (More about that in a moment). Again quoting R. W. :
"Obviously neither Jack Palevich or myself are very happy about ACE C being
out there. I am in the unusual situation of having to compete against
myself having written both Lightspeed C and ACE C. However, ACE C is in the
public domain and you may distribute it as you see fit."
I am posting ACE C (an accompanying message) but, I'll include the
following ad for Lightspeed C. L. C. comes with an
editor/compiler/linker/executor which, like Turbo Pascal, puts you back
into the editor looking at your syntax error if one is found. It is
claimed that L. C. will compile and link the sieve example (which I
included) in under 5 seconds with a ram-disk. It is available for
$39.95 from:
Clearstar Softechnologies
1501 Wood Ave. #36
Sumner, WA 98390
(Usual disclaimer + this info is from a Clearstar ad - I do not own a copy
of L. C.)
Note -- None of these compilers compile into native code. They all
compile into an intermediate code, (analogous to P-code) and this code
gets interpreted at runtime. Also, they do not have such esoteric C
constructions as:
structures, unions
multidimensional arrays
float, double
macros with parameters
A few days ago Brad Banko mentioned a forthcoming "real" C compiler. Does
anyone have more information? Frankly I'm tired of not having a decent
programming language for my machine, and I would welcome such a compiler.
(No, I don't regard Basic as a decent language - but I don't have the energy
to debate, so please don't flame at me.)
I haven't made too much use of Ace C, but I haven't seen problems other than
the lack of language features and the strange syntax -- $( and $) are used
for braces since { and } don't exist on the Atari keyboard.
I uuencoded the binaries using Ultrix uuencode. I hope everything is ok.
Fred Sullivan
Dept. Math. Sci.
SUNY at Binghamton
sullivan@suny-bing.csnetbtb@ncoast.UUCP (Brad Banko) (05/01/87)
the real C that I mentioned recently was an allusion to some work that steve kennedy has been doing with the dbc sources to extend them. i don't know what he plans to do with it when he gets it going, but he has an Atari simulator running on a Vax which has given him plenty of productivity to extend dbc... his problems, the last i talked to him, involved shrinking this improved C to fit in the Atari... let's get on him to try to convince him to bring this out pd or sell it! he is adding structures and some other neat stuff. the difference between what he has done and what Ralph Walden has done is that in the course of developing ACE C and Lightspeed C, Ralph added some nonstandard features to the C such as comments that cannot cross line boundaries and some other stuff. (I have also talked to ralph) don't get me wrong, ralph has done a very good job with several programs (including ACE C) for the Atari's, but isn't it time that we stand up and demand a standard (for once) language? i think so. steve is smk on the net... i don't know his address at this moment. -- Brad Banko Cleveland, Ohio ...!decvax!cwruecmp!ncoast!btb "The only thing we have to fear on this planet is man." -- Carl Jung, 1875-1961