dfr@unc.UUCP (12/16/83)
Does anyone out there know anything about TURBO Pascal by Borland International? It is advertised for $49.95 in the December issue of BYTE (p.456) as a compiler with built-in "Wordstar compatible" editor, all in 28K of disk space.
dukelow@noscvax.UUCP (04/12/84)
I sent two letters to Borland regarding a bug which I have already
discussed on the net. I received responses to both in relatively short
times. It's nice to know that there really are people out there that
have some concern for their customers. Wonder how long it will last.
The first response attempted to explain why there really wasn't a bug,
the second was rather vague concerning the bug, but did provide
information about the planned new release which others may be
interested in. Following is a quote from the letter.
We Plan on letting Turbo 2.0 go around May or June.
The update will contain an editor that does what we
say it will, overlays, 8087 support, isam structure,
windows, sound, color, graphics, and an installation
program for your applications. It will cost about
$30.00.
I suppose that the size of the system will now increase to 35K or 36K
and the compile speed will drop to only 2K lines per minute. Oh well,
it was nice while it lasted.
The above was concerning the IBM-PC version of Turbo. I don't know what
(if any) applies to the CP/M version. They also confirmed that they
have dropped the additional license requirement for distributing
programs compiled by Turbo.
I also recently purchased the CP/M version. With it I got a "coupon"
for a free ($5.00 for shipping and handling) update. A friend says he
got a similar coupon for the IBM version he just purchased. I don't
know how this relates to the $30.00 indicated in the letter from
Borland.
Bob Dukelow
(dukelow@nosc)russ@bmcg.UUCP (04/13/84)
I just wanted to add my experiences to the batch. I purchased Turbo for the PC toward the end of 83 and got prompt response. When contacting Borland by mail about minor bugs and inconsistencies, I generally got a prompt response, by phone, from Phillipe Kahn. When I noticed a bug with addr and with tlist, Phillipe provided me with a free update. The company is impressive: They seem to have learned to avoid all of JRT's goofs.
djm@nmtvax.UUCP (01/31/85)
TURBO PASCAL BUGS
I have found a couple of bugs in Turbo Pascal on an IBM PC-clone running
MS-DOS. I define these as bugs, since the same code works on the campus
DEC-20 (not a good standard, I know, but it's what I have to work with).
The copy of Turbo is roughly 6-7 months old, so these things may have been
fixed by now.
1) If a ';' is incorrectly places before a keyword, the compiler will
not complain. However, when that section of code is executed,
a memory error is generated and a system halt is performed. This
requires a re-boot.
Example : if condition then
begin
statement1;
statement2;
end; <-- explodes here when run
another_statement;
2) If you read from the console a character at a time, each character
must be separated by a carriage return. I am under the impression
that either a) data is buffered one line at a time, or b) data would
be physically read one character at a time. (My Pascal references
aren't handily available as to which is standard, but C/R between
each sounds silly to me).
Dieter Muller
{lanl|unmvax}!nmtvax!djmdotto@winston.UUCP (Kim Dotto) (02/22/86)
I am currently working with Turbo Pascal V3 and I am trying to directly access the screen buffers to be able to do a direct copy of the currently displayed screen (both monochrome and color) for an IBM PC. I am also looking for a method of selectively turning on and off the cursor. If anyone out there can give me any hints or sugestions it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance Kim