Gpc July 1996

gpc@gnu.de

6 participants
20 discussions

Re: Programmers wanted: CRT, Graph, etc. for GNU Pascal
by Berend de Boer 23 Jul '96

23 Jul '96

> There are really few of them, but since the source exists, I suggest > that somebody ports *everything* to the DOS version of GPC, and we can > make the "potentially portable" parts portable in a second stage. What use does it have when you already have a good Dos compiler, i.e. Borland Pascal? It fullfills all my needs for the Dos environment. Besides, what do you mean by 'porting', i.e. should do exactly the same with every quirk inherited or just similar enough? The system unit can be implemented easily, I've done already that for 90%. A few things you can't do like Inc, and some functions which have overloaded parameters (Assign, Close, ...). If similar is good enough, I suggest we define a POSIX interface first, starting from the one I wrote for Dos, and build the Dos unit on top of that. We can do the Crt unit in the same manner, building on top of the curses library. > We have free sources of Borland Units (CRT, Graph, ...) Note, you don't have the source of the Graph unit. >From my viewpoint, Borland Pascal does everything, so spending time for a Dos only solution is not a thing I want. And it is not necessary. And is gpc already for such projects? I see some problems with gpc as I know it: - no renaming, necessary to avoid clashing with c libraries. - qualifed imports available? - how to link with C libraries? You have the c; construct, but exactly how does it work? What does it do? Groetjes, Berend.

2 1

Re: GPC: "how to contribute" file -- job list
by J.J. van der Heijden 23 Jul '96

23 Jul '96

On Fri, 5 Jul 1996 11:01:03 +0200 (MET DST), Peter Gerwinski <peter(a)agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de> wrote: [snip] > > List of jobs > ------------ > [snip] > DJ version (DOS) JanJaap works I came across a new DJGPP app called "rhide" It's a Borland-clone IDE that works with djgpp (C & C++) I'll see if I can hack it to work with GPC. Would make a neat Turbo Pascal replacement ;) > > Installation instructions Larry ? > Documentation Larry ? > Larry, if you're there: I rewrote much of the installation notes. Also, I took a "Using and porting GCC" manual, did a "search GCC -- replace with GPC" action, TeXi-fied much of the existing readme's and put it all together. Let me know how to send this stuff to you. > > Run time system Juki works I have preliminary, new "autoconf" scripts for RTS. Should reduce configuration to "configure ; make". Handles all CFLAGS, platform dependant includes etc. I'll see if I can do something simular for GPC itself. Some other RTS related remarks: *) GNU is going international. How about adding localization to RTS? Won't work if you're not on un*x, but can be buildtime selectable (flag to autoconf script) *) How 'bout RTS as an ELF shared library? *) Documentation again: RTS needs documentation. I looked at the Cygnus and DJGPP C libraries and they use Texinfo fragments in the source, extract it with some utility to one big texinfo file. That way it's easy to keep documentation up to date. > Replacement for (parts of) CRT Peter beta (BO5) > Replacement for Graph Peter planned > Replacement for Turbo Vision Peter planned > Now, if somebody would port TVision to un*x (use termcap / info instead of direct screen writes) it would probably be not too much work to port this RHIDE thing to unix. Then you have an IDE. (sorry guys, I'll never be a fan of emacs) /janjaap --- Thus spake the master programmer: "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." [The Tao Of Programming]

1 0

Extended Pascal
by Peter Gerwinski 23 Jul '96

23 Jul '96

Berend de Boer wrote: > I would do that when the Extended Pascal port is completed and the object > extensions are added (I think it's not wise to use Borland style objects). Why not? Borland style objects have some advantages with respect to those of Object Pascal (Delphi). Concerning portability, GNU Pascal itself is portable, and I don't know any Object Pascal compiler except Delphi. (I have heared about Object Pascal for the Apple Macintosh, but never seen it.) So there is no compiler around (except those of Borland) to preserve compatibility to. > Last time I really looked at gpc (beginning 1995) it missed simply too much. What is missing? If you publish a list, perhaps somebody would like to do the job of implementing it. Or do it by yourself -- it should be relatively easy since Borland style objects work in GNU Pascal. Yours, Peter ******************************** ATTENTION: New e-mail address! ******************************** -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dipl. Phys. Peter Gerwinski Fachbereich Physik Universitaet-GH Essen Phone: +49-201-183-2763 D-45117 Essen Fax: +49-201-183-2120 Germany e-mail: peter.gerwinski(a)uni-essen.de --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 0

Turbo Vision, IDE
by Peter Gerwinski 23 Jul '96

23 Jul '96

Jan Jaap van der Heijden wrote: > Now, if somebody would port TVision to un*x (use termcap / info instead of > direct screen writes) it would probably be not too much work to port this > RHIDE thing to unix. Then you have an IDE. (sorry guys, I'll never be a fan > of emacs) I am working on something similar to a port of Turbo Vision to UNIX and any other operating system I can access. The project is called BO5; version 0.0.1 was released on 19. December 1995. For more information about BO5 look at ftp://kampi.hut.fi/jtv/gnu-pascal/turbo-alpha/README.BO5. By the way: There is a Borland-style IDE for Linux called XWPE. Look at the Debian distribution of Linux in the subdirectory source/devel. Yours, Peter ******************************** ATTENTION: New e-mail address! ******************************** -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dipl. Phys. Peter Gerwinski Fachbereich Physik Universitaet-GH Essen Phone: +49-201-183-2763 D-45117 Essen Fax: +49-201-183-2120 Germany e-mail: peter.gerwinski(a)uni-essen.de --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 0

Re: GPC: "how to contribute" file -- job list
by Berend de Boer 23 Jul '96

23 Jul '96

> Now, if somebody would port TVision to un*x (use termcap / info instead of > direct screen writes) it would probably be not too much work to port this > RHIDE thing to unix. Then you have an IDE. (sorry guys, I'll never be a fan > of emacs) I would do that when the Extended Pascal port is completed and the object extensions are added (I think it's not wise to use Borland style objects). Last time I really looked at gpc (beginning 1995) it missed simply too much. Groetjes, Berend.

1 0

The purpose of GNU Pascal
by Peter Gerwinski 23 Jul '96

23 Jul '96

Hello folks, I think it's time to discuss about the purpose of GNU Pascal as stated by Juki (jtv) in GPC.GUIDE. More concrete: I disagree with some points and I would suggest to modify them. jtv> The purpose of the GNU Pascal project is to produce a jtv> Pascal compiler (called GNU Pascal or gpc) which jtv> - may be distributed under normal GNU license conditions jtv> - can genarate code and run on any computer for which the GNU C jtv> compiler can genarate code and run. Concerning the points above, I agree in complete. jtv> - supports both the Pascal standard and the Extended Pascal jtv> standard as defined by ISO and ANSI and IEEE. jtv> (ISO 7185:1990, ISO/IEC 10206:1991, ANSI/IEEE770X3.160-1989) It is okay and desireable to support these standards, but I wouldn't agree to obey the standards "come what may". As far as I would guess, 80% of all Pascal programmers are working with Borland Pascal or Delphi or a compatible system like Virtual Pascal, Speed Pascal, FPK Pascal, GNU Pascal or one of those ShareWare Pascal compilers written for the DOS platform. On the other side I know of only two Extended Pascal compilers: Prospero's Extended Pascal and GNU Pascal. So I call in question that Extended Pascal is more portable than Borland Pascal. Furthermore, I could not write my real-world programs just with Extended Pascal; I need, for example, bit shift operators, GetMem, FreeMem, and Objects. I think the way to go is to collect the good features of all the existing standards, ISO 7185, ISO 10206, Borland Pascal, Object Pascal, Pascal-SC, and integrate them in one powerful compiler which will set up the next standard. This is necessary, in my opinion, because *none* of the standards mentioned above is what I would call an "ideal" Pascal compiler by itself. I would be satisfied only with the *combination* of them. Apart from some bugs, the current version 1.1-2.6.3 of GNU Pascal is the best Pascal compiler I have ever seen, and we are not too far from making it even better. jtv> One reason for this is the desire to promote the use of Extended jtv> Pascal, which combines the clarity of Pascal with powerful jtv> tools (e.g. modules and string manipulation) suitable for real-life jtv> programming. Pascal was originally designed for teaching. jtv> Extended Pascal provides a smooth way to proceed to challenging jtv> programming tasks without learning a completely different language. The same holds for Borland Pascal. (In my opinion, the goals stated above are even better realized in Borland Pascal, but that's a matter of taste.) And there are other standards around, for example Pascal-SC (also named PXSC -- Pascal eXtensions for Scientific Calculations) with very useful features such as user-definable operators and procedure overloading. I would suggest to fix the goal of combining the clarity of Pascal with powerful real-life tools -- independently of a concrete standard. So my suggestion for the "Purpose" section of GPC.GUIDE would begin with: The purpose of the GNU Pascal project is to produce a Pascal compiler (called GNU Pascal or gpc) which - combines the clarity of Pascal with powerful tools suitable for real-life programming, - supports both the Pascal standard and the Extended Pascal standard as defined by ISO, ANSI and IEEE (ISO 7185:1990, ISO/IEC 10206:1991, ANSI/IEEE 770X3.160-1989), - supports other Pascal standards (UCSD Pascal, Borland Pascal, Pascal-SC) in so far as this serves the goal of clarity and usability, - may be distributed under normal GNU license conditions, - can generate code and run on any computer for which the GNU C compiler can generate code and run. Pascal was originally designed for teaching. GNU Pascal provides a smooth way to proceed to challenging programming tasks without learning a completely different language. jtv> GNU Pascal compiler is part of the GNU Compiler family jtv> combining a language independent part of the GNU Compiler with jtv> a Pascal specific front end. jtv> jtv> Other compilers of the family currently include compilers for jtv> the C, C++ and Objective C languages. Since this is true, we should compare the purpose of GNU Pascal with that of GNU C. In the section "Warning Options" of the GNU C info documentation (gcc), in the context of the "--pedantic" option which tells GCC to follow the ANSI standard as strictly as possible, we can find the following: gcc> A feature to report any failure to conform to ANSI C might be gcc> useful in some instances, but would require considerable gcc> additional work and would be quite different from `-pedantic'. We gcc> recommend, rather, that users take advantage of the extensions of gcc> GNU C and disregard the limitations of other compilers. Aside gcc> from certain supercomputers and obsolete small machines, there is gcc> less and less reason ever to use any other C compiler other than gcc> for bootstrapping GNU CC. In the same spirit I would suggest: Implement all reasonable extensions into GNU Pascal, encourage their use, and forget about the limitations of other compilers (such as UCSD or Borland Pascal) or standard definitions (such as Standard Pascal or Extended Pascal). jtv> ABOUT THE PASCAL AND EXTENDED PASCAL LANGUAGES jtv> ---------------------------------------------- jtv> jtv> [...] jtv> jtv> Extended Pascal is a standardized language which contains so jtv> significant extensions to Pascal that it is best regarded as jtv> a new language. It is currently not very well known, and computer jtv> vendors do not seem to be eager to provide compilers for it. jtv> Thus, there is social need for GNU Pascal supporting Extended jtv> Pascal. It is okay to support Extended Pascal (why not?), but in my opinion, Extended Pascal is not clear and powerful enough to serve as "the new Pascal standard", so programmers are not motivated to switch from Borland Pascal to Extended Pascal. I think, this is the reason why computer vendors do not provide Extended Pascal compilers. As far as I have understood, the committee which defined the standard knew Borland Pascal, so I simply cannot understand how they could define a standard which lacks some important features of existing compilers, for example the bit-shift operators or dynamical memory allocation with user-specified size (GetMem and FreeMem). There is social need for a *new* standard which integrates ISO 10206 Extended Pascal and other standards such as Borland Pascal and Pascal-SC. With GNU Pascal, we can *create* that new standard. For those who like standards: I suggest to implement compiler switches into GNU Pascal which force GPC to behave (inasmuch as possible) like a compiler of the specific standard, for example --standard-pascal for an ISO 7185 Standard Pascal compiler --extended-pascal for an ISO 10206 Extended Pascal compiler (which rejects Borland extensions) --borland-pascal for emulating the Borland Pascal compiler (which rejects Extended Pascal extensions) --pascal-sc for emulating a Pascal-SC compiler (not yet possible) but the default should be to accept *all* of the Pascal dialects and any combination of them, for example a Borland-style Unit which deals with Extended Pascal complex numbers and exports a Pascal-SC-style operator for matrix multiplication. (You actually can write such a thing with the current version of GNU Pascal!) jtv> Please refer to the document borland2ep.doc to find out more about jtv> the differences between Turbo Pascal and Extended Pascal. jtv> That document is written by Berend de Boer. I wrote another document about the same topic. It is somehow obsolete since GNU Pascal now understands most of the Borland Pascal language, but nevertheless you can find it at ftp://agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de/gpc-2.6.3/bp2ep.doc I am looking forward for reactions. Yours, Peter

1 0

Re: Programmers wanted: CRT, Graph, etc. for GNU Pascal
by Berend de Boer 22 Jul '96

22 Jul '96

Hay guys, Seems part of my message was lost, here the remaing part: > The calls from System that are portable can for 90% be written in plain Extended > Pa The calls from System that are portable can for 90% be written in plain Extended Pascal. We should do better by following existing standards and provide EP interfaces for that. Groetjes, Berend. (-:

1 0

Re: Programmers wanted: CRT, Graph, etc. for GNU Pascal
by Berend de Boer 20 Jul '96

20 Jul '96

First of all, does anyone know if there is a gpc archive? I went on holiday with my computer stuck and my compuserve mailbox overflooded (it seems to have a max of 100msgs). I miss about 1 week. > Florian has got free sources > for Borland compatible Units like SYSTEM, CRT, PRINTER, and GRAPH > for FPK Pascal which cry for being ported to GNU Pascal. > This should not be too difficult at least for the DOS platform because > FPK Pascal uses the same assembler syntax as GNU Pascal, and both > compilers can run with the GO32 DOS extender. The point of having an extended pascal compiler is being portable, at least that's the goal. Assembler and Dos are not the way to go. The point of having a System, Crt, Printer of Graph unit is entirely uninteresting if it is not portable except if you want to port Dos Borland Pascal programs to Extended Pascal. Why should anyone want to do this? I assume everyone is programming for Windows 95/Windows NT or Unix. Are programmers really running Dos today?? Quite a few calls in System or Crt do simply not apply in non-Dos environments. A portable Printer library?? The calls from System that are portable can for 90% be written in plain Extended Pa

1 0

Programmers wanted: CRT, Graph, etc. for GNU Pascal
by Peter Gerwinski 07 Jul '96

07 Jul '96

Hello, everybody! I am in contact with Florian Klaempfl, the author of FPK Pascal, another free 32-bit Pascal compiler. Florian has got free sources for Borland compatible Units like SYSTEM, CRT, PRINTER, and GRAPH for FPK Pascal which cry for being ported to GNU Pascal. This should not be too difficult at least for the DOS platform because FPK Pascal uses the same assembler syntax as GNU Pascal, and both compilers can run with the GO32 DOS extender. (GNU Pascal for GO32 can be downloaded as ftp://kampi.hut.fi/jtv/incoming/turbo11b.zip - see the recent mail by Jan Jaap. :-) Anybody wants to do the job? Yours, Peter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dipl. Phys. Peter Gerwinski Fachbereich Physik Universitaet-GH Essen Phone: +49-201-183-2763 D-45117 Essen Fax: +49-201-183-2120 Germany e-mail: peter.gerwinski(a)uni-essen.de --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 0

NewsGroup announcement (from rs1)
by Peter Gerwinski 07 Jul '96

07 Jul '96

According to Peter Gerwinski: >From gpc-request(a)santra.hut.fi Sun Jul 7 02:54:19 1996 From: Peter Gerwinski <peter(a)agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de> Message-Id: <199607070038.CAA14344(a)agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de> Subject: NewsGroup announcement To: gpc(a)hut.fi Date: Sun, 7 Jul 1996 02:38:12 +0200 (MET DST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello, folks! Did somebody already announce GPC 2.6.3 with Borland extensions to the NewsGroups? If not, I am planning to crosspost the following to comp.lang.pascal.misc, comp.lang.pascal.borland, and comp.lang.pascal.iso-ansi: 8<------------------------------------------------------------------------------ NewsGroups: comp.lang.pascal.misc,comp.lang.pascal.borland,comp.lang.pascal.ansi-iso Followup-To: comp.lang.pascal.misc This is the announcement of version 1.1-2.6.3 of GNU Pascal (The announcement is somehow late since the actual release was on 19. December 1995. This won't happen again with the release of the next version.) -------- GNU Pascal is, as the name says, the Pascal compiler from the GNU family. This means: - 32 bit compiler, no limits, highly optimizing - runs on most operating systems (including DOS, OS/2, Linux, or any other UNIX) - FreeWare according to the GNU General Public License - compatible to other GNU tools such as GNU C and GNU debugger The compiler accepts the following language standards: - ISO 7185 Standard Pascal - ISO 10206 Extended Pascal (90%) - Borland Pascal (80%) Some highlights: - from Extended Pascal: complex numbers, initialized variables, structured function return values, modules - from Borland Pascal: inc, dec, shl, shr, absolute variables, units, objects - GNU extensions: min, max, (PXSC-style) user-definable operators -------- The source for the ISO compiler (and more information) is available from ftp://kampi.hut.fi/jtv/gnu-pascal Additional source for Borland Pascal compatible (and other) extensions is at ftp://kampi.hut.fi/jtv/gnu-pascal/turbo-alpha Binaries for DOS and OS/2 (with the EMX extender) and for Linux (a.out) are in ftp://kampi.hut.fi/jtv/gnu-pascal/binary Binaries for DOS (with the GO32 extender) and for Linux (elf) are in ftp://kampi.hut.fi/jtv/incoming ;-) If you want to join the gpc mailing list, write to gpc-request(a)hut.fi. The address of the list is gpc(a)hut.fi. -------- Peter Gerwinski <peter.gerwinski(a)uni-essen.de> 8<------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Is this okay, or too long, or whatever? If you have any improvements, please let me know. Bug reports for my English are also most welcome. :-) Yours, Peter ******************* NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS! ******************* -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dipl. Phys. Peter Gerwinski Fachbereich Physik Universitaet-GH Essen Phone: +49-201-183-2763 D-45117 Essen Fax: +49-201-183-2120 Germany e-mail: peter.gerwinski(a)uni-essen.de -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ******************************** ACHTUNG: Neue e-mail-Adresse! Ab dem 22. Juni 1996 bitte an peter.gerwinski(a)uni-essen.de schreiben. ******************************** ATTENTION: New e-mail address! >From 22. June 1996 on please write to peter.gerwinski(a)uni-essen.de ******************************** -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dipl. Phys. Peter Gerwinski Fachbereich Physik Universitaet-GH Essen Phone: +49-201-183-2763 D-45117 Essen Fax: +49-201-183-2120 Germany e-mail: peter.gerwinski(a)uni-essen.de --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 0

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

Gpc July 1996