Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!nmouawad
From: nmouawad@watmath.waterloo.edu (Naji Mouawad)
Subject: Re: TP6.0: thoughts and questions
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 90 02:25:15 GMT
Message-ID: <1990Dec13.022515.16701@watmath.waterloo.edu>
References: <2354@bnlux0.bnl.gov> <4980@husc6.harvard.edu> <1990Dec12.005926.21954@csn.org>
Lines: 56


I've just finished reading an article in the latest issue of PC mag
detailing TP6.0 capabilities. This have left me a little bit
confused.

I've ordered my upgrade but I guess I will not get it before early
next year.

For one thing, it seems that Tp6.0 is pretty much alien to the
VROOMM technology: 'The heap manager returns to the style of TP 3.0,
allocating memory in chunks rounded to 8 bytes. This granularity
helps prevent heap fragmentation, but it also may cause trouble in
programs that depended on the specific behavior of the heap
manager." says Pc mag. What does 'style of TP 3.0' means ? The old
heap manager or a new one that looks like the old one ?

For another, Tp 6.0 does not produce Window's compatible code. Rather
it has a behavior that resembles that of Windows and other GUIs: event
driven.

"Turbo Vision is based on event handling, and not standard
procedural programming. All user input passes through the application's
GetEvent method, which interprets the input and generates for example
a 'Key Down' event. This event gets passed to the main application
HandleEvent method. If it can handle the event, it does so, performing
some appropriate action, if not, it passes the event to the selected
object among its *sub-objects*. The sub-object either handles the event
or passes it to its selected sub-object. There are also 'broadcast'
events that got to every object and 'message' events between objects."

Is this a style of Object-Oriented Programing or a beefed-up language ?
What is a sub-object ? What does it mean to 'broadcast' a message ? 
'Broadcasting' makes sens to me in parallel environment. 

When I got TP 5.0, I 'smelled' OOP. I sensed that they were readying
TP for OOP. With TP 5.5, I thought they may extend the versatility
of objects (multiple inheritance; I don't think that this is a good
idea anymore) etc. Event Driven programing ? No way ! 

But right now, it seems that the next step is clear: Graphical Vision
which is SAA/CUA compliant, and it programers conform to this Vision,
porting TP to OpenLook, Xwindows and even the Next system should not
face major difficulty since the GUI would have been taken care through
the Vision, which will act as the stdio library for C and C++, but
in a much more intelligent fashion.

It seems to me that the guys behind TP believe as much as we
do that they've got the best language all around and maybe
show-time is just one version away.

--Naji.
-- 
         ---------------+-------------------------------------------
        | Naji Mouawad  |      nmouawad@watmath.waterloo.edu        |
        |  University   |-------------------------------------------|
        | Of Waterloo   |   "Thank God we cannot prove He Exists."  |