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From: jmcn@castle.ed.ac.uk (J McNicol)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: Environments (was Re: Arity's so-called upgrade)
Summary: Have you considered Prolog-2 for Windows 3.0?
Message-ID: <9318@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 25 Mar 91 16:29:02 GMT
References: <12066@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> <5024@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> <12102@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
Organization: Scottish Crop Research Institute
Lines: 74

In article <12102@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> todd@uhunix1.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Todd Ogasawara) writes:

>Some of the things I want in a development environment are (and I'm sure
>I'm forgetting a few things here) in no particular order.

Have you considered using Prolog-2 for Windows 3.0? It's a good solid
Prolog which accesses Windows primitives for dialog and graphics
handling.  Windows being an 'environment', Prolog doesn't have to
provide all of the tools itself.

>
>o An easy to use but powerful debugger/tracer. Something akin to what
>  Turbo Debugger is to Borland C++

The Prolog-2 debugger seems pretty good, with a separate trace window
and buttons for skip, step, etc.

>
>o An integrated editor that is powerful, flexible, and extensible. I
>  am speaking here of something like the Sage Professional Editor or
>  even GNU EMACS. I would want to be able to go from the editor to
>  either the interpreter or compiler very easily for testing and then
>  get back to my editor again very easily.

Just use MicroEmacs for Windows!

>o The editor should also have a good help system that is context sensitive.
>  This is especially important for documentation on vendor-unique
>  extensions (windowing, menuing, etc.). A hypertext type facility like we
>  seen in Quick C, Borland C++, etc. is fine for me.
>

Emacs has a reasonable help facility.

>o The compiler (and I do want a compiler as well as an interpreter) should
>  be able to take code developed in an interpreted environment without
>  much code modification (zero code mods would be perfect).
>
I don't think the compiler is terribly hot since I haven't got any
speed increase using it, but it works (slowly). I probably haven't
tested it sufficiently.

>o There should be good online (hypertext) as well as hard copy documentation.

Prolog-2 has a hypertext-like help facility in the Windows 3.0 style,
documenting all extensions. It's just been upgraded and is very handy.
I can't be as enthusiastic about the manuals though, they are chaotic
to put it kindly. But the information is there.

>o There should be either a built-in or third party source code version
>  control facility (I use SCCS out of habit but I know there must be
>  better source code control software out there).

I use GNU RCS.

>
>I'm sure I forgot a few things (like mentioning a built-in 'make' facility)
>but those are the items that come to mind just now.

I have my own 'make' facility which is easy as clicking on an icon.

Overall I like Prolog-2 for Windows very much, especially as it
means I can write Windows 3.0-ish applications easily (there are no run-time
license fees, just the large memory cost!) and there is no DOS memory
limitation.

BTW the support is excellent since the author of the software responds to
queries directly.  I just got some promised improvements, including 
some requests I made for selectable fonts and a polygon primitive.

Julian Smart

Disclaimer - I have nothing whatsoever to do with Expert Systems Ltd.,
I'm just a satisfied customer.