Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!maytag!watstat!dmurdoch
From: dmurdoch@watstat.waterloo.edu (Duncan Murdoch)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: USEFUL advice about TP 5.5, please
Message-ID: <324@maytag.waterloo.edu>
Date: 26 Jul 89 13:00:00 GMT
References: <55930@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Sender: daemon@maytag.waterloo.edu
Reply-To: dmurdoch@watstat.waterloo.edu (Duncan Murdoch)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 56

In article <55930@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> thurn@cis.ohio-state.edu (Martin 'Sulu' Thurn) writes:
>OOP?  Who cares about a 70's comic strip cave man?  Not I!
>
>Can some TurboPascal 5.5 "veterans" give us some _useful_ descriptions of
>the new version?  Let the following be a guide for your discussion:

There are very few changes to 5.5 other than the OOP additions.

>
>Can TP automatically save the pick file when we Run?
>Are we still restricted to one editor window?
>Are we still limited to 4 Ctrl-K # text position savers?
>Does the debugger understand WITH statements, so we don't have to waste half
>  our watch window with the name of the variable?
>Is there a hot-key for Locate procedure/function symbol, so we don't have
>  to type in the whole name?
>If we accidentally press F9 instead of Ctrl-F9 while debugging, is TP smart
>  enough to just say "no changes have been made" instead of trashing the 
>  current debug session?
>Is the "smart" display swapper _really_ smart enough to not flash the screen
>  at us when we're just performing a simple assignment statement?

The answer to all of these is "No change from 5.0!"

>Can we, or can we not, cut and paste examples from help windows?

Here's a yes!

>Can we display reserved words / strings / comments in different colors (like
>  Quick Pascal's editor)?
>Can we stop execution and drop to the debugger on the 99th iteration of a 
>  loop without pushing Ctrl-F9 99 times?

No, and I thought you always could.  (I'm talking about TD; I don't think
it's possible in the IDE.)  Use the View Breakpoint F10 Condition Pass count
choice, or something like that.

>Can we be sure that when we push Alt-F9 while editing an .INC file, 
>  TP will remember which parent file to start compiling?

No change. (Set the Primary file in the Compile menu if you want Alt-F9
to work properly.  And remember to save your options locally, if you ever
want to compile anything else :-)

Things you didn't ask about:

The overlay manager is a tiny bit smarter now.  Instead of cycling units
through the buffer, it can move frequently used ones to the front.  It can
also handle overlays attached to the EXE file.

The Extended type coprocessor stack overflow bug is fixed.

I can't think of anything more at the moment... but if you don't want to 
use OOP, and aren't just curious, I think you should wait for 6.0.

Duncan Murdoch