Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ames!elroy!scgvaxd!ashtate!dbase!awd
From: awd@dbase.UUCP (Alastair Dallas)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: News From Home: LSC 3.0 and Mac II Arrive
Keywords: LightspeedC, THINK, Mac II, No Real Info
Message-ID: <429@dbase.UUCP>
Date: 29 Jul 88 13:19:49 GMT
Organization: Ashton Tate Development Center Glendale Cal.
Lines: 47

I promised to post when LightspeedC 3.0 arrived.  I did; I am; it took almost
six weeks check to package.  It's as good as everyone says.  Two things that
I hadn't learned from this net:  1) You can only have one pre-compiled header
(okay by me--they give you MacHeaders which is customizable, completely
replacable, or you can just bask in the convenience of it all).  Thing 2)
is that I had the impression from a posting someone made that the manual was
fluffy with respect to a precise description of the language.  The poster
complained that ANSI and differences from the draft standard were skirted.
True, but the manual includes a point-by-point description of subtle
differences between LSC and K & R C, using the section numbers from 
Appendix A in K & R.  Using this description, you can figure out what's
missing from ANSI--I noticed, for instance, that 'const' and 'volatile' are
not reserved words.  Also, I'm not sure, but I think that although prototypes
are supported (including noise identifiers, as in int myf(char *src,char *dst)
as opposed to int myf(char *, char *)), they require the old format of
function specification:

	int myf(src, dst)
	char *src, *dst;
	{  ...  }

instead of

	int myf(char *src, char *dst)
	{  ...  }

This is only a problem if you want your prototypes to be liftable from your
code.  No big deal.

The other thing about the new version is that the manual seems very good.
It's a paperback book (and there's a second volume describing the Unix
libraries that I don't plan to use much).  Although the K&R stuff is in
there, the book is quite suitable for someone just starting a night-school
class on C.  It assumes very little knowledge.  They ship Hello,World which
uses the Unix libraries; MiniEdit, which demonstrates the Mac interface, 
and Bullseye, which demonstrates the debugger.  The debugger has been 
praised to death; I'll chime in when I have something to add.

I also took delivery of a Mac II today; 40MB internal, extended keyboard,
1 MB :-(.  Call me irresponsible, but I just ordered a 19" Trinitron monitor
(RasterOps) and a SuperMac Spectrum/8 card for it.  Apple says I can cancel
my back-ordered 4MB (~$1000) and buy it from a third party (~$1500).  
Such enlightened trade practices.  Hooray for the free market.  Where
do I get the money for these toys?  Believe it or not, I'm selling my house
and moving into an apartment.  How does anyone else afford it?

/alastair/