Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!haven!uvaarpa!ra!des7f
From: des7f@ra.cs.Virginia.EDU (David Sappington)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: IIe vs. IIgs; C-compilers
Message-ID: <1312@ra.cs.Virginia.EDU>
Date: 5 May 90 05:40:59 GMT
Organization: U.Va. CS Department, Charlottesville, VA
Lines: 28

I have recently become involved in trying to port some educational
software from MS-DOS to the Apple IIgs and (potentially) the IIe.
I'm most comfortable in the Mac environment though I've done a
little work with MS-DOS machines.  Unfortunately, only within the
last few weeks have I had investigated the IIe and IIgs.  Needless
to say I have a couple of questions:

1) Are most IIgs's used like IIe's?  Does most software being run
on the IIgs also run on the IIe or do most people with gs's run Mac
like applications that use the ToolBox?  Basically, should we write
for the ToolBox or code for the least common denominator (IIe)?

2) What C-compilers are available for the IIgs and IIe?  I
currently have the MPW IIGS Cross Development package which I will
likely use if we decide to code for the IIgs's ToolBox (which would
mean nearly a complete rewrite!).  I'm interested in learning about
other C-compilers with good screen handling characteristics --
especially those whose code runs on a IIgs and a IIe.  The original
program made lots of direct writes to the PC's video RAM to achieve
satisfactory character animation performance.  I'm not looking
forward to stuffing characters into the II's incredibly contorted
80-column memory map but it may come to that.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Dave Sappington                       des7f@virginia.edu
Institute for Parallel Computation    des7f@virginia.bitnet
University of Virginia