rieman@tigger.colorado.edu (John Rieman) (08/22/89)
ColorCard, from Kinko's Academic Software, claims to add windows and color graphics to Hypercard, as XFCNs. But it looks like it just displays color pictures in windows -- i.e., it doesn't incorporate color into the main Hypercard window. ($40) CompileIt, from Heizer Software, is supposed to speed up scripts by a factor of 5 to 10. I dunno whether it compiles scripts into XCMDs (seems like 5 - 10 isn't enough of an improvement) or just does some tricky optimization, or...? ($100) Can anyone describe their experience with either of these products before I spend money on 'em? Thanks much, -john John Rieman, University of Colorado, Boulder rieman@boulder.colorado.edu
woodl@yvax.byu.edu (08/22/89)
I just recently purchased CompileIt, but haven't used it extensively yet. I did run their demo which is a HT function that does square roots. You compile it. It worked much as they claim (e.g., the function in HT takes 2-3 seconds on SQRT(1000), whereas when it is compiled, it is almost instantaneous. It appears to have become an XFCN, but I didn't actually check with ResEdit. The original function is only about a dozen lines and it took 13 minutes to compile, so you will spend some time waiting. Larry Wood, Brigham Young University
ryan@maui.cs.ucla.edu (Ryan R. Ramsey) (08/24/89)
In article <762woodl@yvax.byu.edu> woodl@yvax.byu.edu writes: > > I just recently purchased CompileIt, but haven't used it extensively yet. >I did run their demo which is a HT function that does square roots. You >compile it. It worked much as they claim (e.g., the function in HT takes 2-3 >seconds on SQRT(1000), whereas when it is compiled, it is almost instantaneous. >It appears to have become an XFCN, but I didn't actually check with ResEdit. >The original function is only about a dozen lines and it took 13 minutes to >compile, so you will spend some time waiting. > >Larry Wood, Brigham Young University I have TRIED to use CompileIT many times but it seems to be more of a hassle than it is worth. The observations I have made are: 1> It does not compile the stack but only blocks of code. If you have a big stack with 100 subroutines, CompileIt will make 100 different XCMDs. 2> The XCMDS work very fast, but unless you compile everything, the difference in speed is hardly noticeable. 3> CompileIT is slow. I tried to compile a 20 line subroutine and it took almost 2 hours. 4> CompileIT does not understand a lot of hypertalk structures thus makeing many scripts uncompileable. +----------------+----------------------------+ | Ryan R. Ramsey | UCLA Computer Science Dept.| +----------------+----------------------------+ | ryan@CS.UCLA.EDU | | ...!{uunet,rutgers,ucbvax}!cs.ucla.edu!ryan | +---------------------------------------------+