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From: Randomizer@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Turbo 4.0
Message-ID: <1335@cup.portal.com>
Date: Sat, 7-Nov-87 13:20:48 EST
Article-I.D.: cup.1335
Posted: Sat Nov  7 13:20:48 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Nov-87 01:20:18 EST
References: <752@cup.portal.com> <880@cup.portal.com>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 74
XPortal-User-Id: 1.1001.2065


I just got Turbo 4.0 Yesterday. It has a manual similar to turbo C -- i.e.
written with Sprint -- ( wrod processor). THe manual is bound (of course)
and is 654 pages long -- not including advertisement pages in the back.
I don't know if anyone has read the turbo technix magazine , but i got mine
a week ago and it explains turbo's new units quite clearly.
The Turbo compiler (turbo.exe) has a separate library for  system, crt,
dos, printer, graph, turbo3 and graph3 procedures. Of the many procedures
Turbo3 and graph3 help in easing the move from turbo 3 to turbo 4.
The turbo3 library allows calls such as read(kbd,ch)-- 'KBD' is no longer
supported in turbo 4.0. The Graph3 library helps programmers who programmed
in turbo 3's turtle graphics etc..
Turbo 4.0 seems to have a very good graphics library -- reminiscent of the
graphix toolbox. From what I see the graphix functions can autodetect what
card you are using and set the appropriate graphics mode. There is a demo
graphix program that comes w/ turbo 4 and I had no problems running it
on my hercules clone. The graphics were resonably fast and there is a set
of fonts that we can choose from.

The conpiler is very fast --- If anyone would like to send me Benchmarks to run
I will do it -- send via e-mail.
There are a couple of points that may trouble some users:
The stack configuration of turbo 4 has been changed so they warn
that most inline code may have to be re-written.
This really troubled me because I use FastWrite and it the upgrade.exe program
that helps you convert turbo 3 to turbo 4 gave me all sorts of warnings
about inline code.. Then i remembered that turbo 4 can write directly to the
screen  like Fastwrite -- still this may bother a lot of people who have
extensive inline code. Turbo 4 does not support the 'external' statement
anymore. It tells me to convert the external file to an .OBJ file to be linked
or to convert it to a typed constant. This bothers me since my Mouse driver
from mouse systems will no longer work.
Some highlights:
there is a INCR() and DEC() function similar to 'C's  ++ statement.
the incr() and Decr() can increment in steps not only 1 increment at a time.
The conditioanl compilations directives are nice.

The exec() function can pass not only command line data but
also Global data. The global data can be shared by the parent and child
something like the 'chain' command that was supported in 3.0.
--------------------------------------------------------------
The conversion program Upgrade.exe worked very quickly and thoroughly
it writes a journal file of the necessary conversions fromturbo 3 to 4
upon request via a command parameter. There is also a command parameter
that breaks up your large 3.0 source code into the new units -- removing
all OVERLAY keywords. (yeah!!)
Your original source is stored as .3TP files.
The new source code created by UPGRADE.exe has comments imebeded in the source
like:  {! 20. ^ textmode requires a parameter (mode: integer) in turbo Pascal
4.0 }
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I still found the installation section of the book to be very vague...
There are 3 disks one labled 'compiler' which is fine,
another labeled Utilities/ examples the last labeled graphics/microcalc

I do not consider the instructions :
"place each turbo pascal distribution disk into drive A and tyrpe the followind
command:
copy a:*.* c:\tp "
to be of any help.
The microcalc/graphics -- disk contains a lot of DEMO source --- it also
contains misc. fonts etc... I don't know what I need or don't need.
As usuall I felt the book could use a little more examples -- even ~600
pages are not enough. The procedures and functions are written w/ more
than one on a page -- very similar to turbo C -- thus some definitions
go over to the next page-- very hard to read while trying to juggle the
big book.  A plus is the fact that Tom Swan -- author of Mastering Turbo Pascal
is writing a follow up to that good book. This new book should provide some
good examples.
Anyway -- this was too long :-)
Write back via e-mail if you have questions, benchmarks  etc...
Randomizer@cup.portal.com

These are my opinions.
Just a first look.