Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!cornell!vax5!u2dj
From: u2dj@vax5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Programmer's Extender
Summary: very poor
Message-ID: <17361@vax5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU>
Date: 18 Nov 88 16:14:36 GMT
References: <8617@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Sender: news@vax5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU
Reply-To: u2dj@vax5.cit.cornell.edu (Ron Beloin)
Organization: Cornell Information Technologies, Ithaca NY
Lines: 36

In article <8617@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> janin@tybalt.caltech.edu (Adam L. Janin) writes:
>
>Has anyone used the Programmer's Extender?  I'm interested in increasing
>application production time, and it seems to be a good choice.  I currently
>use MPW C and I am considering changing to LightSpeed C.
>
>Also, APDA lists the price of Programmer's Extender Volume 1 and 2 at
>about $100 each, and the cost of the Profesional version, which includes
>both, is ~$310.  What else is included in the Pro version?
>
I bought Programmer's Extender about 1 year ago and was disappointed
as soon as I started using it. At first, I thought some of the 
problems I was having were my own ignorance of the Mac innerds, but
as time went on I found more and moere bugs in their code. Some of
these cost me a lot of time to track down, and in retrospect,  it
would have taken me less time to start from scratch.
I had Vol. 1&2, but I don't know what the Pro version contains. It
wasn't around when I bought it.
Now, this was a year ago, and they may have fixed it up a lot since
then, but I wonder if the concept of using a bunch of canned routines
really works best. (MacApp is another story, being in a different
league in my opinion). One problem is that not all of the source is
provided, so if a bug or design flaw is in one of those procs., you
have to go back a workaround it somehow. Another problem was there
were so many units that were all interdependent that often after
"USESing" the PE units there was little room left for your code.
I would try to find example code from working applications. Many
people on the net have been very gererous with providing examples
of routines. Also, there is the Transskel stuff, but I don't know
if it is up to date. I should mention that I was using the Pascal
version of PE, its possible the C version is quite different.
Hope this was some help...

>		Adam Janin
>		janin@csvax.caltech.edu
Ron Beloin, u2dj@vax5.cit.cornell.edu