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From: shawn@pnet51.cts.com (Shawn Stanley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: Merlin and APW-ORCA/M
Message-ID: <1028@orbit.UUCP>
Date: 28 Apr 89 15:45:49 GMT
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Organization: People-Net [pnet51], Minneapolis, MN.
Lines: 33

wtaylor@pro-hysteria.cts.com (Will Taylor) writes:
>perhaps this has been asked before, and from a non-biased viewpoint, is
>APW-ORCA/M any better than Merlin (8,16,16+)   I know Merlin is faster because
>it is loaded into memory at one time.. and APW has more documentation in the
>main stream, but to any with experience with both, is there really that
>much difference for Assembly programming (not pascal or c) ? thanks.

"Loaded into memory at one time..."  As in, it's only one program?  That in
itself points out something I like about APW.  It's a shell environment, where
you may run other programs (including your own).  I especially like this
ability for debugging purposes, and also because I like to add my own
programming utilities.

I originally converted all my Merlin source files for my BBS over to ORCA/M so
I could have an Apple IIgs assembler to work with.  (My BBS used to run on an
Apple //e with a clock card for interrupts and time-keeping, and I wanted to
take advantage of the Apple IIgs in those ways, in addition to others.)

When Merlin 8/16 came out, I played with it a little bit, wondering if I could
move back into Merlin since I had been so used to it.  But it ran in ProDOS 8,
and I had to quit every time I wanted to run a module of my BBS, or any ProDOS
16 product for that matter.

I haven't tried 16+, but now I suspect I'm too used to the APW environment. 
I've always liked shell environments, and I like the fact that I also have
access to a C compiler without having to quit the shell, so I can write up
quick utilities or file conversion programs.

I guess I would call APW "open-architecture development", and it's a feature I
like a lot.

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