Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uwvax!astroatc!nicmad!madnix!jason From: jason@madnix.UUCP (Jason Blochowiak) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple Subject: Re: Development Environments on 2GS. Summary: Neither are great Keywords: pascal C Message-ID: <1189@madnix.UUCP> Date: 19 Mar 90 11:07:12 GMT References: <14399@cbnewsc.ATT.COM> Reply-To: jason@madnix.UUCP (Jason Blochowiak) Distribution: na Organization: ARP Software, Madison, WI Lines: 130 In article <14399@cbnewsc.ATT.COM> kca@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (k.c.archie) writes: >I am interested in comments on different development environments >on the Apple 2GS. I am interested in Orca C vs. TML pascal 2. [Edited] >Support for Toolbox access: > write my own assembler functions, is there a library of routines. I'm not sure about TML ][, but I know that it's simple enough to add assembly routines to Orca/C stuff. Orca/C (as well as APW C) allow for in-line assembly, but it's not all that useful for anything except teeny snippets - the assembler is pretty nice (the Orca assembler - the APW asm is basically the same thing). >Resource editing > I am not really sure what this is but it appears to be > a useful tool for generating desktop applications. Resources are, in the most broad description, little chunks of data that the Resource Mgr allows you to manipulate. More specifically, quite a few of the toolbox routines allow resources to be used as templates (as a real simple example, NewWindow2() allows you to say "I want a new window; use this resource as the description for the window"). Resource editing isn't a requirement - neither is resource generation. Quite limited (and buggy) resource editing is available from TML ][, and there's a resource compilation tool that you can get from APDA (comes with the beta release of the APW tools, v1.1). >Examples Code > Are there templates of programs to open windows, do graphics, etc. There's plenty of sample code that comes with both. I haven't really looked at it for quality, though. >Desk Accessories > Are there examples or templates to help write these? Both implementations support desk accessories, but I'm not sure if TML ][ can generate CDAs. There's some sample code for DAs that comes with Orca/C, and I think with TML ][. >Debugging Aids > Are there any and what sort? Well, kind of. There's the (non-symbolic) 65816 debugger that you can get, and then there's Orca's desktop debugger, but that's part of their desktop environment, which I'll comment on shortly. >Compiler Speed > Will I be able to eat lunch while compiling Depends on the size of the program. One thing that seems to be quite nice about TML ][ is that the toolbox interfaces are precompiled UNITs. With Orca/C and APW C, they're in source form, and have massive dependencies - so, if you include , you're going to end up getting , , and a few others... I keep my code modules fairly small, and I use my make facility to keep compilation times down. Of course, then there's the linker, which is pretty slow. I'd definitely recommend getting a TransWarp GS if you're at all serious about doing anything non-trivial on the gs. >Code Speed > Can I write games in it? Certainly not arcade games. With something like a card game, or an adventure-type game, speed shouldn't be a real problem. > Will the users of my applications fall asleep while using them? Probably not. One thing about the //gs's speed, though, is that it makes critical code optimization (read: re-write in assembly) a necessity, rather than a luxury, at least for anything fairly heavy duty. >Building Tools > Something like make. 360 Microsystems has a make facility that they're selling. I wrote one (pretty limited, but it does what I want), and there are a few others floating around. >Editors > What are they like? Uck. I wrote my own editor for assembly stuff, and I use the port of MicroEMACS for C. The standard editors are _very_ weak, although I suppose they do try for at least minimal functionality. >Standards > Do they compile the standard language? Wrong person to ask about that one... >Documentation > Is it any good. The Orca/C docs seem to be moderately good. I only read a small section of their manual, tho' - quite a bit of it was devoted to "here's an intro to //gs programming using Orca/C", which I didn't need. My cursory inspection of TML ][ didn't include reading any part of the manual. >The goal here is to decide which system is easier to use. [...] >I want to know about the Environment, not the language. Well, neither of them are great. I happen to like C an order of magnitude more than Pascal, so I don't have TML Pascal ][, but I have seen it and played with it a little bit. My comments on it are based on that, and on talking to folks that use it. Orca's desktop enviroment is incredibly buggy (other people seem not to have as many problems with it...), and I've been hearing horror stories about TML's editor (they claim that the bugs are due to bugs in Apple's TextEdit toolset, which is entirely possible). With Orca/C, you have a choice of the desktop environment, or a line-oriented interface. I prefer the text- based environ, although that may just be because I've yet to have a particularly good experience with a desktop environment. I'm not at all sure of the quality of code that TML ][ spits out. The Orca/C code is pretty good, when it works. I'd seriously recommend that if you get Orca/C, you wait until v1.1 is out (Byteworks is sending registered users betas of v1.1, but they're certainly not entirely functional). Reading back over this, it doesn't seem like I'm giving you much to go on. Oh, well. Like I said, I have Orca/C, but that's because I don't like Pascal, and the APW C compiler was driving me nuts. >Kent Archie kca@cbnewsc.att.com -- Jason Blochowiak - jason@madnix.UUCP or, try: astroatc!nicmad!madnix!jason@spool.cs.wisc.edu "Education, like neurosis, begins at home." - Milton R. Saperstein