Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ulowell!cg-atla!hildreth
From: hildreth@cg-atla.UUCP (Lon Hildreth)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Prototyper
Message-ID: <7443@cg-atla.UUCP>
Date: 21 Jul 89 13:48:44 GMT
References: <89072022020433@masnet.uucp>
Reply-To: hildreth@cg-atla.UUCP (Lon Hildreth)
Organization: Agfa Compugraphic Division
Lines: 50

In article <89072022020433@masnet.uucp> david.dmytryshyn@f428.n250.z1.fidonet.org (david dmytryshyn) writes:
>The other day, I received a demo copy of Prototyper.  I played with
>it for a while, and said to myself, gee, I could get into this.  I
>then read a review on it in MacGuide (which I'm sorry to see die) and
>it was quite favourable.  Is anybody using this or something similar
>to build their user interfaces with?
>
I spent some time with Prototyper the other day.  When I was drawing my
first dialog, I got a Bus Error.  Twice.  If you don't give a dialog the
right name when you create it, it can't be changed.  I accidently created
a dialog as a window.  There's no way to change its window type.  I had
to delete it and redraw the entire dialog contents.  When I canceled out
of the Load Resource dialog, it bombed with an Illegal Instruction.

Prototyper produces resources in two formats: one as a separate resource file
(perfect for THINK C), the other is in antiquated RMaker format.  Does anyone
still use RMaker?  How about a Rez format version, guys?  When I DeRez'd the
resource file, all of the DITL's contained "additional data" that was shown
in comments.  What is this?  Is it important?

Prototyper provides absolutely no code for standard menu items.  AppMaker,
a recently released code generator from Bowers Development, provides a lot
of code for standard menu items.  Some of it, of course, has to be application
specific.  Prototyper generated code is a lot more obscure, cryptic, and 
harder to read than AppMaker generated code.

I had Prototyper produce C code for MPW 3.0 and Think C, and Pascal code for
MPW.  The C code did compile, link, and run OK for both.  However, the Pascal
compiled and linked OK, but encountered a Bus Error immediately when I ran it.

I cannot recommend a product that crashes as often as Prototyper does.  For
whatever it's worth, I was running it on IIcx.  Mayber it's friendlier on
other machines.  If it weren't for the crashes, it would be a nice prototyping
environment.  I would not use the generated code, though.  But it allows you
to run a prototype without having to compile anything.  We're also experimenting
with SuperCard as a prototyping tool.  It looks pretty good, although it's
very slow on anything less than an 030 machine.

For someone without the bucks to get into the MacApp world, I would suggest
AppMaker with Think C.

Disclaimer:  I have no affiliation with any of the above mentioned companies.
I just want to have a nice development environment.



-- 
Lon Hildreth		...!{decvax,ulowell,ginosko}!cg-atla!hildreth
Agfa Compugraphic	
Wilmington, MA		A Cub fan, but not a Bud man.