zrzm0111@helpdesk.rus.uni-stuttgart.de (MUFTI) (06/02/91)
Hi ! Here is a "new" argument in languagewars: Most common opinion after the langague-war was, that you should normally use highlevel languages and should use assembler for critical parts of the program, cause highlevel constructs like "x=x+2*(y-34)+z" are faster to write and very much easier to maintain than the same in Assembler. Most agree, that the misadvantage was, that the librarys lacks some memory for unused routines. There is a way to use mathematical strings like "x=x+2*(y-34)+z" in programs, which run only through a macro-assembler producing a absolutefile and don't lack so much memory for the libraries. I wrote a little program, that converts such mathematical strings in assembler- macros, but it's not really ready yet. It supports only Integer-calcuation ( cause F. Lancester's update for TLA supporting Floating-point-coprozessor-command isn't ready yet ) and the quick hacked division-macro is too slow ( this is the next thing I do ). Before I spend much brains in a better optimisation of the target-code, ( currently temporaery variables are hold in memory 8-{ ), I want to know if the are some errors. Can someone test it ? I build a little demo, to declare it's use. ( Be warned: Cause gawk is the only FREEWARE-tool for archimedes under RISCOS, which supports high-level-language constructs and is full portable to most other machines, I wrote the program mainly with it. Cause gawk is made for faster machines, the program runs very slow. Cause it's developped under UNIX, it must be started from the Command-line-Interpreter and therefore things like desktop-interfaces and multitasking is impossible (getline <"kbd:"; doesn't work correct (bug ?) so it's quite complicated to read a string from keyboard .... ) ) The program is called !formula and it's declared as FREEWARE. The demo (and the program !formula) is available via ftp from rusmv1.rus.uni- stuttgart.de ( and therefore via mail by bitftp@pucc.princeton.edu ). File is /soft/acorn/riscos/programming/macro-asm/formula-demo. You need TLA (comp.binaries.acorn or rusmv1) and gawk (info-server@newcastle.ac.uk or rusmv1) to use it. My opinion about new ARM-assembler-commands: There was some rumors about new ARM-assembler-commands. The example of the extentions of the 8086-chip to the 80186-chip, which made new assemblercommands in real-mode, which nearly not used by any MSDOS- software, show, that you have to think to downward-compatibiltiy of the new commands. The only way I see, to do this for the archimedes, is to put a software emulator for this new commands ( which behaves like the FPU-emulator ) into the public domain. Questions: 1. Is there a tool like !lineedit, which can be used without starting the desktop at all ? 2. Can someone explain me what filetype the file !arc100.arc100 has ? I get funny results with fileinfo !arc100.arc100. 3. Someone posted, he is angry by extracting .tar.Z -files cause he have to give lots of CLI-commands. Why don't we declare a standard (like !submit/!extract for .tar.Z.uue -files) ? 4. Same procedure as every time: Does everyone knows implementations of PD/Shareware/FREEWARE Editors ? We want to public them on our ftp-server in Stuttgart. so long MUFTI ps: Cause G.Toal find out, that mail through the connections between janet and internet may disappear, I will from now on send back a short reply to all mails. If the problems hold on, I have to change the mainly used host ... internetadress: zrzm0111@helpdesk.rus.uni-stuttgart.de which is for janet (G.Toal told me that): zrzm0111%de.uni-stuttgart.rus.helpdesk@earn-relay zrzm0111%de.uni-stuttgart.rus.helpdesk@nsfnet-relay bitnetadress: ZRZM AT DS0RUS1I