Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: assempro
Message-ID: <3309@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: 11 Feb 88 23:03:33 GMT
References: <6847@oberon.USC.EDU>
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 44

> After 2 days looking,testing and using assempro, I have to say that : 

I recently played with AssemPro for a week in order to review it for Amiga
Sentry.  I found pretty much the same kind of things...

> - XREF/XDEF can be simulated by using SLABEL/ILABEL .
>   For example,  a SMALL.LIB (small amiga.lib that can be found on one 
>   of the fish disk) can be created using the same trick. 
>   Assembling All the _lvo offsets and declaring them as SLABEL (XDEF)
>   and then using them using ILABEL (XREF) . 
>   Advantage : takes less space on the disk (so a bigger work disk).
>               the assembling is faster. (the Offsets being pre-assembled.)

Also, modules can be simulated via INCLUDE.  This is because labels in INCLUDEd
files are local to that file, unless you say otherwise.  AssemPro probably
runs near as fast as most linkers on the Amiga, so this isn't so bad, at least
as long as you're only dealing with assembly language.  And all source code
of course.

> - The text editor is really primitive, I miss EMACS .However the search and 
>   replace option is really powerfull (wich is proportionally complicated).

I don't know if I'd call it "really" primitive.  Certainly not on a par with
Emacs in any of it'd better flavors, but in the same ballpark as EDT.  In
fact, it seems inspired by EDT.  It offers Keypad editing commands as well
as menu selected ones, and a command language very much the same flavor as
EDT's nokeypad mode.  You can't do macros, but you can attach strings of
these commands to function keys.  If they let you at the control keys as 
well you could do a simple Emacs emulation, as I've done way back when I had
to use EDT.  It does at least let you edit multiple documents onscreen, and
cut/paste between them (though not using the Amiga's clipboard).  The windowing
feature is better than all Amiga Emacs I've seen so far; they all do split
screening just like on a VT100.  Much too weak for a proper Amiga environment.

My main caution on this package is that you won't be able to properly mix it
with other languages, since you can't link.  I suppose your C program could
LoadSeg() something created with AssemPro, or call up an AssemPro generated
library, but you're not going to call AssemPro functions directly from C.
This may be a minor quip, though, since both C compilers already come with
Assemblers.
-- 
Dave Haynie  "The B2000 Guy"     Commodore-Amiga  "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {ihnp4|uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: D-DAVE H     BIX: hazy
		"I can't relax, 'cause I'm a Boinger!"