Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ames!apple!claris!drc
From: drc@claris.com (Dennis Cohen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: the future of TML Modula-2
Message-ID: <10203@claris.com>
Date: 23 May 89 13:49:23 GMT
References: <128@spam.ua.oz> <1994@internal.Apple.COM>
Reply-To: drc@claris.com (Dennis Cohen)
Organization: Claris Corporation, Santa Clara CA
Lines: 47

In article <1994@internal.Apple.COM> BOBC@AppleLink.Apple.Com (Bob Campbell) writes:
>
> [ various deleted comments concerning history of product ]
>
>About the other Modula-2 compilers available for the Macintosh (I am 
>biased of course), and perhaps someone like Dennis Cohen could better 
>speak to the issues.  There are three compilers that I know about.
>
Well, since you asked :-}

I tend to use both Bob's compiler and the Semper compiler.  It is much
easier to move code from Bob's compiler to Semper's than the other way
around because of the import list generator and so forth.  I have a slight
preference for the SemperSoft interface organization approach since it
doesn't require that as many files need to be opened and closed during the
compilation process, thus speeding things up.  Ideally, one or both of the
compilers would have something like $LOAD to make this part even faster.
The support for Pascal strings in the Semper compiler is very handy when
working on Macintosh software--just ask the C compiler people.  I'm sure
from his comment that Bob intends to offer this as well.  Both products
are excellent, and each has minor merits when compared with the other --
I find it difficult to say that either is noticeably superior to the other.

MetCom Modula-2 is from Metropolis Computing in Mooers, NY (really Montreal,
PQ).  It is a good educational product as it runs, with the source level
debugging, comfortably on a 1MB, two-floppy Plus or SE.  In its current
release, it is not something I would use for the development of a commercial
product for the following reasons:
  1)  The code generation is not as good as that of either Bob's or Semper's
  2)  The Linker is incredibly stupid -- nothing gets left out
  3)  You can only create applications -- DAs, INITs, XCMDs, etc need not
      apply.
On the other hand, for small jobs that aren't going out of house or for
"vanilla" Modula-2 programming, it is a very useful product to have.  In
short, I think that it has a different target market than either SemperSoft
or Bob's compiler in its current implementation.

I haven't seen the P1 compiler, so I can't comment on it.  However, from
Bob's comment about MacApp support I would really like to find out how to
acquire a copy.


-- 
Dennis Cohen
Claris Corp.
------------
Disclaimer:  Any opinions expressed above are _MINE_!