priceke@ma.ecn.purdue.edu (Kevin E Price) (10/03/90)
In article <1591@wet.UUCP> naga@wet.UUCP (Peter Davidson) writes: >A recent poster asked about an "inexpensive and good Toolbox >for C". I am connected with the development of a new C function >library which is due for publication in a month or so and, with >the permission of the developer, here is an informal pre- >release description. This toolbox is a general purpose library >for use with Microsoft C 5.10 and 6.00 under MS-DOS (other >compilers later). It has about 300 functions which fall into >the general categories of: string, keyboard, video, printer, >file, disk, date, time, window, menu, mouse, pixel and >miscellaneous. There are numerous functions which are not >found in other libraries, e.g. conversion between dates and the >astronomical Julian day number system and functions which allow >simultaneous output to screen, printer and textfile, as well as >many functions for small, specialized tasks. It has an >advanced text-based windowing system and provides the ability >to create menus and dialog boxes. Video output may be via >direct memory access (for speed) or optionally via the bios. >Unlike some user interface libraries, this one is fully >compatible with CodeView, having been debugged with it. It is >meant to be an easy-to-use toolbox for the people as well as >for professional developers and probably the initial price will >be $99 (despite strenuous requests from some in the marketing >department to put it in the $200-$300 range). Full details >will be available next month in the official product release >announcement. To get on the mailing list send your address to >the publisher, Dolphin Software, 48 Shattuck Square #147, >Berkeley, CA 94704. If anyone has any special requests (for >functions, that is) then email them to me and you may see them >in the library. The developer aims to provide useful functions >in most areas except for communications, EGA/VGA graphics and >multi-tasking. I don't mean to take away from what may truly be a great pdoduct, but I thought I should mention something that is available now. There is a book out by John Clark Craig called "Microsoft QuickC Programmer's Toolbox", published by Microsoft Press, 1990. In our engineering library, the call number is 005.133 C844m 1990. It claims to have "more than 200 programs, functions, and utilities for supercharging QuickC programs." Its scope is almost certainly not as great as that described for Mr. Davidson's package, but it may be sufficient for many uses. Some of its features are utilities for text editing and string manipulation, windows (text, not graphic), menus, mouse operations, and simple sound. It includes many Julian calendar-based utilities. Many additional functions are included for more specific needs: probability & statistics, complex math and "safe" division, geometry, DOS & bios functions. I thought many of the routines provided were pretty trivial (like converting cartesian to polar coords), but but there were a significant number of good ones. The book is very readable with good clean code. It costs $22.95 and a disk with all the utilities plus some examples is available for another $21.95 if you don't want to do the typing. They claimed the disk contains 13,000 lines of code. I am not associated with either product in any way. I just wanted to point to a lower cost alternative that is available NOW. Just another data point. - Kevin Price priceke@cadlab.ecn.purdue.edu