$$$I$JV@NERVM.BITNET (12/08/87)
Date: 8 December 1987, 13:24:14 LCL
From: William Kirchhoff 904-392-4601 $$$I$JV at NERVM
To: INFO-DEC-MICRO at SCORE.STANFORD
After reading the last few messages, I decided that it was time to
put my $0.02 in. As to C compilers for the Rainbow, I have used both
versions of Mark Williams C (CP/M and MSDOS) upto version 2.something.
The initial interest was in the graphics library under CP/M using GSX.
This quickly proved to be a frustrating process. MWC is broken into a
five pass compiler (including assm/link), and on a floppy system, this
was just not worth the trouble. The compiler itself was quite complete,
and the newer versions (w/ source for libraries) should be quite usuable
on a hard drive Rainbow. The third compiler, which I enjoyed toying with
until I got sidetracked into Prolog, was the Manx C Professional System.
I borrowed a friends IBM version to see how it held up on the Rainbow -
didn't want to shell out $450 on a chance. It ran the simple test programs
without any difficulties. So I compiled a moderately sized text processing
program, and it ran flawlessly. The source for all the libraries was
included, so they could all be updated to Rainbow status with some effort.
I haven't touched C in over a year do to my playing in Pascal, Modula2,
and Forth on the Rainbow. As a first time investment, the new Lightspeed
C looks your best bet (check reviews in DDJ). If a professional system is
needed, try the newest version of Manx with all the source.
As to the Kermit discussion, there are several versions currently
available. Version 2.29C is available at Columbia, and is the development
version of 2.30. My favorite version to date is a special rewrite done
just for the Rainbow - I believe it is something like version 2.29B. It
is under the name MSTRB1 or MSVRB1 (forget which - but it is the larger
at something like 1000 blocks). It contains fixes to all the communication
bugs, almost complete VT220 emulation (along with ability to appear as
VT52, VT100, VT102, VT152, etc.), on the fly changing/creating of hot
keys to represent commands, ascii strings, etc. It does alot of neat
things through a pop-up menu while in terminal mode. It even has full
statistics and a straight transmit mode. The only true bug is the same
as in all 2.29 versions - the cursor keys cannot be placed in application
mode (this is used here by the 7171). This has been fixed in 2.29C (ala.
2.30), and a work around is done through redefining the keys manually.
Last, but not least, I was wondering how interested everybody would
be in a version of Forth-83 customized for the Rainbow. I have just
started, so I should be finished some time over Christmas. I hope to
rebuild the entire kernal with alot of nice little enhancements. I'm
also planning of implementing high speed video, extended keyboard
commands, and several rom calls. Once everything is working, I'll
put together a windowing block (and hopefully someday a graphics block).
If you have any questions, just drop me a note.
Bill
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