c164-ah@katerina.uucp (Bob Heiney) (11/24/88)
Here's some info on the MPW 3.0 Beta now available from APDA.
By the way, as of January, APDA is going to be switched to the direct
control of Apple. Membership will not be affected by this change.
MPW 3.0 is a major upgrade to the MPW system. Some features include:
SADE: An interactive source and machine level debugger that works
with all MPW language compilers that generate appropriate symbolic
information. The 3.0 C and Pascal compilers do this.
Projector: A project management, source control system. It lets you
do deltas and branches like SCCS.
New C Compiler: This is a brand new C compiler that supports (at least
some of, if not all of) the ANSI standard.
It also doesn't have the annoying 32K limit on global data.
MPW 3.0 requires a hard disk, System 6.0.2, at LEAST 2 megs of memory,
and 4-6 megs if you want to use SADE with MultiFinder. A Mac II or
Mac IIx is seriously recommended for larger projects.
I don't remember any other features. APDA recommends that if you have the
2.0.2 Pascal compiler you should upgrade since the 3.0 Beta compiler is
much more stable (!) than the 2.0.2 compiler. The C compiler is brand new,
and likely to be buggy, so don't upgrade to the Beta release if you're in
the middle of an important project. The October/November APDAlog also says
that purchasers of the Beta software will be provided with a free upgrade to
the final 3.0 release including documentation.
If you already have MPW & the Pascal compiler, the upgrade cost is around
$270.00. If you have both Pascal and C, the cost is $330 to upgrade.
I don't know why the upgrades are SO expensive. The total cost for MPW
has gone way up, too. It's now around $495 or so for the environment and
a language.
DISCLAIMER: I typed this in from my memory of the Oct/Nov APDAlog, and
take no responsiblity for either the accuracy of my
recollection, or the accuracy of the APDAlog.
Bob Heiney
c164-ah@bard.Berkeley.EDUtim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) (11/28/88)
Does anyone know whether the MPW 3.0 C compiler does precompiled header
files? This is the biggest problem with compilation speeds. For a
250K program I did for TOPS, I wound up making my own stripped-down
header files for the Mac OS just to get acceptable speed on a Mac II.
On an SE with no accelerator, it's sheer hell.
It's not exactly hard to preload symbol tables from a dump file. If
Apple refuses, I may just do an _Open patch for that purpose myself.
It's just too slow to read in some ten-plus very long include files on
every C file. And it's dumb to spend time trying to organize your code
to minimize include files per source file.
Also, does anyone know what kinds of optimizations the compiler will
perform? The code quality of the Greenhills MPW C compiler started out
great, but steadily declined with every new release, and in the final
release a tech note said optimization simply should not be used at all
because of bugs in it. Thanks, guys. Do we get at least the register
optimization techniques that were so well understood a decade ago? I
wish I didn't have to ask, but most C compilers I've stepped through
ignore optimization. PCC seems to have had the effect of freezing C
compiler development at a mid-70's level; I was amazed Greenhills did
as well as they did with a PCC base.
--
Tim Maroney, Consultant, Eclectic Software, sun!hoptoad!tim
"Because there is something in you that I respect, and that makes me desire
to have you for my enemy."
"That's well said. On those terms, sir, I will accept your enmity or any
man's."
- Shaw, "The Devil's Disciple"shebanow@Apple.COM (Andrew Shebanow) (12/01/88)
The Beta version of MPW is costs more than the previous versions because the final version is included in the price. The upgrade isn't really free: the cost of an additional set of manuals and disks is included in the beta price. For the record, if you wait until January and just buy the final version as a C and/or Pascal bundle, your total price will have gone DOWN by a good margin (I forget the exact amount, but it was in the neighborhood of $50-75). Have fun, Andrew Shebanow MacDTS
shebanow@Apple.COM (Andrew Shebanow) (12/01/88)
MPW 3.0 C does support precompiled headers, but they are a little buggy in the beta version. My compile times went down by a factor of 8 for a large project! The new C compiler uses the same basic code generator as the MPW pascal compiler, so its level of optimization is reasonably high, though certainly not state of the art. Benchmarks have shown that the new compiler is slightly faster on some programs, and slightly slower on others. By the way, I'm pretty sure the Green Hills Compiler doesn't contain any PCC code. It was written from scratch (in Pascal!), many years ago. Andrew Shebanow MacDTS
u2dj@vax5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU (12/02/88)
The Oct. Apdalog (which is the latest?) contains this interesting catch 22.0B1: We recommend everyone upgrade to Pascal 3.0B1. (and later) Only those that need the features of MPW 3 should upgrade MPW now. (and in another place) Pascal 3.0B1 *requires* MPW 3.0B1. Summary: Buy the new Pascal, but don't use it! ;-) Ron Beloin, u2dj@vax5.cit.cornell.edu / u2dj@crnlcax5.bitnet PS: anyone know the scoop here? Is it true that Pascal won't run under the old MPW? Anyone know about LS Fortran?
nick@ccicpg.UUCP (Nick Crossley) (12/02/88)
One of the first things I noticed about MPW 3.0 is that my menu bar is now too wide. There is a new menu for Projector, which I will be using. This means that my menu bar is now one item wider than it was, and it now pushes right up against the Multifinder small icon at the right hand edge. There are two problems with this. First, the slightly displaced Multifinder icon no longer works (clicking on it does not context switch). Second, what if the next version of MPW adds yet another menu item, or if I want to? What I would like to be able to do is move one of my menus off the menu bar, and make it a submenu to one of the others. Does anyone know of any way of doing this? If not, Apple MPW team, how about adding this? Something like AddMenu File/Special 'Subitem 1' 'Subitem 1 commands ...' to add a hierarchic menu Special to the File menu? -- <<< standard disclaimers >>> Nick Crossley, CCI, 9801 Muirlands, Irvine, CA 92718-2521, USA Tel. (714) 458-7282, uucp: ...!uunet!ccicpg!nick
levin@bbn.com (Joel B Levin) (12/02/88)
In article <43244@ccicpg.UUCP> nick@ccicpg.UUCP (Nick Crossley) writes: |One of the first things I noticed about MPW 3.0 is that my menu bar is now |too wide. There is a new menu for Projector, which I will be using. . . . This, fortunately, is easy to fix. All the menus to the right of the Windows menu are scripts, which you can change. I now have Dir, Proj, Lk, Bld (and TMLP) instead of Directory, Project, Lookup (see the Examples folder) and TMLPascal -- and plenty of room left over on the right. /JBL UUCP: {backbone}!bbn!levin POTS: (617) 873-3463 INTERNET: levin@bbn.com
nick@ccicpg.UUCP (Nick Crossley) (12/03/88)
In article <32983@bbn.COM> levin@BBN.COM (Joel B Levin) writes: >In article <43244@ccicpg.UUCP> nick@ccicpg.UUCP (Nick Crossley) writes: >|One of the first things I noticed about MPW 3.0 is that my menu bar is now >|too wide. There is a new menu for Projector, which I will be using. . . . > >This, fortunately, is easy to fix. All the menus to the right of the >Windows menu are scripts, which you can change. I now have Dir, Proj, >Lk, Bld (and TMLP) instead of Directory, Project, Lookup (see the >Examples folder) and TMLPascal -- and plenty of room left over on the right. But I don't want completely incomprehensible names for my menus! If we start abbreviating like that, MPW may start to look Unix-like! :-) Anyway, the menu I want to make a submenu *should* be a submenu; the only reason it is on the menu bar is that I don't know of a way to create hierarchic menus in MPW. Another thing I would like to be able to do is change the order of the menus a little; I would like to keep the 'Windows' menu at the right edge, and insert all the others before that. -- <<< standard disclaimers >>> Nick Crossley, CCI, 9801 Muirlands, Irvine, CA 92718-2521, USA Tel. (714) 458-7282, uucp: ...!uunet!ccicpg!nick
lpringle@bbn.com (Lewis G. Pringle) (12/16/88)
In article <32983@bbn.COM> levin@BBN.COM (Joel B Levin) writes: >In article <43244@ccicpg.UUCP> nick@ccicpg.UUCP (Nick Crossley) writes: >|One of the first things I noticed about MPW 3.0 is that my menu bar is now >|too wide. There is a new menu for Projector, which I will be using. . . . > >This, fortunately, is easy to fix. All the menus to the right of the >Windows menu are scripts, which you can change. I now have Dir, Proj, Well then, here is another reason for adding the ability to create hierarchical menus in MPW. I like to have a "Sources" menu which list all of the source/header files for my current project, MacApp sources, and even more goodies. Now I have a long list to scroll thru should I want to open a file near the bottom of the list (Its so bad I somtimes resort to the SFGetFile dialogbox :-). It would be very nice to be able to organize this Sources menu hierarchically! Lewis. "OS/2: half an operating system for half a computer." In Real Life: Lewis Gordon Pringle Jr. Electronic Mail: lpringle@labs-n.bbn.com Phone: (617) 873-4433