Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!rochester!ur-tut!sunybcs!boulder!hao!ames!oliveb!epimass!csi!jwhitnel
From: jwhitnel@csi.UUCP (Jerry Whitnell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: MacII basic question:  What tools for serious scientific stuff?
Keywords: This guy needs to know SOON.
Message-ID: <1363@csib.csi.UUCP>
Date: 9 Jan 88 02:10:32 GMT
References: <7880@eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU>
Reply-To: jwhitnel@csib.UUCP (Jerry Whitnell)
Organization: Communications Solutions Inc., San Jose, Ca
Lines: 55

In article <7880@eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU> earleh@eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU (Earle R. Horton) writes:
|HELP!
| ...
|I am pretty confident I could do the project in Lightspeed C according
|to the specifications, and using only the Macintosh native OS, assuming
|that LightSpeed works well on the MacII, doesn't crash too often, and
|produces workable code (68881 support?)  I could also spring for a
|Fortran compiler, if there is a good one that supports the 68881 and the
|ToolBox.  I KNOW I could do a bang-up job in Fortran.  I am not at all
|well informed about the other options.  I know what the physics at the
|base of the problem are, and have some idea of what the computing
|capabilities of the MacII, but I simply have no idea how well the tools
|offered work.
|
|Can anybody answer these questions?
|
|	MacApp: Is it suited to a project of this type (heavy numerical
|		analysis)?

MacApp deals primarily with the user interface (menus, windows, printing,
documents, etc.).  If you've already developed your own set of tools
to handle these, it won't do you much good.

|	HyperCard: Would this be of any use?

Hypercard is primarily a simple database.  Not much support for numerics.

|	LightSpeed C: Is this good on a MacII?

The only thing better then LightspeedC on a Mac Plus is Lightspeed C on
a Mac II with Multifinder.  I've had no problems with it on my Mac II
(40 MB hard disk with 5 mb of memory).  Very fast, very bug free (except
for stdio support, sigh).  As far as I'm concerned, this is the only
choice for single programmer projects.  You will need the 2.13 upgrade
(available from Think and recently sent over the net) to get the includes
for IM 5 and Multifinder compatibility.  The only thing wrong for your
purpose is that it doesn't support 68881 directly but uses SANE to access
it.  This slows things down.  I think the next version will fix that but
I don't know when that will be available.  You probably could do your
development under Lightspeed C and rebuild the final version with MPW
C (which I think has '881 support).  For the best performance, use a large
cache (I use 500 kbytes) to catch all the includes.  You can also
increase the size of the LightspeedC partition from the default 700K to
about 2 mb.  BTW, MultiFinder also comes free with the Mac II.
|
|	With my experience, is there something else I could buy that would
|	 work better than any of the above? ($500, tops, unless it is 
|	 REALLY good, and EVERYBODY says to get it.)

If you plan to use color, you will want Inside Mac Volume 5 final draft
(available only from APDA).  If you don't have TMON, you should get that
as well.  The support for the Mac II isn't great, but it beats Macsbug.

|
|*Earle R. Horton, H.B. 8000, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755   *