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From: cg@myrias.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Draco release imminent
Message-ID: <504@myrias.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 11-May-87 14:43:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: myrias.504
Posted: Mon May 11 14:43:36 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 13-May-87 06:41:45 EDT
Organization: Myrias Research, Edmonton
Lines: 56
Keywords: Draco compiler shareware includes

I've finally got permission from Commodore to release my Draco version of the
Amiga includes (thanks Carolyn!), so I'll be sending the disks off to Fred
Fish in a day or so.

For those of you who may be new or who have forgotten about it, Draco is a
programming language I designed and implemented (first on CP/M, now for the
Amiga). It is C-like in what it can do, but does stricter type checking,
checks/converts function parameters, and has a less special-symbol oriented
syntax. This is an initial release - some things, like floating point support
are not there yet. It is fairly stable (I've used it with about 30,000 lines
of code on the Amiga) and is quite happy to run on an Amiga with 512K and 2
floppies. The entire system, including all libraries and include files, fits
on one disk, leaving your second drive free for your sources and objects.
Code quality is currently about the same as the earlier Lattice if you didn't
use register variables.

What this means is that people who don't want to pay $400 for a commercial C
compiler can now join in the fun of programming the Amiga in a compiled
language. Draco is being distributed as shareware (more on that later), so
if you want to encourage me to work on it some more, send a small donation.
As an example, none of my programs use floating point, so if there isn't
support for it, it is very unlikely that floating point will be added. Bug
reports are greatly appreciated - I use the compiler practically every day,
so any bugs are likely to be quickly squashed.

The planned distribution consists of two disks. One is the system disk which
I boot from, containing the compiler, a linker, the include files, libraries,
and a minimal set of standard AmigaDOS commands. Also included is a copy of
my programming editor, Ded (good thing Matt chose not to call his editor
that!), which is a multi-file editor with fairly quick screen updates. The
second disk includes lots of documentation for the language, the compiler,
the standard support library, and the editor. Also included are a couple of
directories full of sample sources, ranging from 20 line programs to a
complete screen-oriented text adventure system. A couple of Amiga-specific
programs are there too, and my scenery generator is already available on an
earlier Fish disk. Lastly, there is a directory containing the binary (quite
large) for a popular UNIX game whose name starts with 'E'.

There has been a lot of discussion on the net lately about shareware, so,
since this is a shareware distribution, I'll put in my two cents worth.
Taking a program commercial in the current market takes a lot of money and
time. I have a full time job already, so I don't have the time to run a
company and still have time to program more stuff (I still have to finish
porting my graphics D&D game system!). I also HATE doing that kind of thing.
If there is some company out there which would like to turn Draco or any of
the other stuff into a commercial product, then by all means get in touch
with me - I'm just not going to do it by myself. Why shareware instead of
public domain? Simple - even responding to letters from people with bug
reports, update requests, etc. takes time. Especially if what they want is
things that I wouldn't otherwise be inclined to do. Shareware donations are
an incentive for me to do these things - if the donator thinks that the
improvements are worth money to them, then their requests will receive more
attention than others.
-- 
Chris Gray		Myrias Research, Edmonton	+1 403 432 1616
	{seismo!mnetor,ubc-vision,watmath,vax135}!alberta!myrias!cg