--note----------------------------------------------------------------- Username: [rainer] Use the above line in your e-Mail body to reach me in our company. You may use [rainer] at the beginning of the SUBJECT line (with higher priority) instead. -- This will allow us "Automatic Mail Forwarding". Our human "postmaster" may be reached with [rainer]. DO NOT USE OTHER FILE-ENCODING THAN UUENCODE, IT CANNOT BE PROCESSED!!! --note----------------------------------------------------------------- Received: from Hantsch-Message_Server by hantsch.co.at with WordPerfect_Office; Tue, 12 May 1998 08:50:03 +0100 Message-Id: <s5580d3b.001@hantsch.co.at> X-Mailer: WordPerfect Office 4.0 Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 08:49:28 +0100 From: hantschr@hantsch.co.at To: gpc@hut.fi Subject: GPC -- Compatibility with TP/BP ???? Item Type: Note ** High Priority ** Hello, Peter Gerwinski, hello there! A few days ago I bought the latest version of S.u.S.E Linux 5.2. Included was (again) GPC. As an old TurboPascal programmer I was interested in what might have changed in GPC since SuSE 5.1 from Nov.97, but there seems nothing to have changed. In the meantime I was also in direct touch with some professional software developers and they all told me the same: GPC IS CURRENTLY NOT USABLE FOR PROFESSIONAL USE, BECAUSE: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ o First I must say that the GPC developers do a great job, but in fact, the final product is currently not really usable. o It is VERY incompatible with TP/BP, making it very hard to work with it. Too much workarounds are currently required. o It seems to be very buggy. Therefore I would never use it for professional development. I hope this will change soon. o It is not documented. -- Ouch! EVERY software has a manual. Especially a compiler should have one because of its complexity! I get the impression tha GPC is extended too quickly. Too many people add features instead of making GPC stable and adding the still missing but often required TP commands. Of course, this is my personal impression, but reading all that stuff inside this group and several other newsgroups, I read some words too often: DEBUGGER, TROUBLES, HOW DO I..., etc. A stable working compiler doesn't really need a debugger! It has to cover the OS so well that only logically mistakes can happen, but never an error caused by the compiler! In my long time of programming with TP/BP (I started on CP/M with TP 3) I never used a debugger and my programs still work stable! The compiler MUST WORK absolutely error free! I suggest that you add the basic TP/BP commands FIRST and make GPC running stable to get out of ALPHA, BETA-1, BETA-2,..., BETA-infinity. THEN, after finishing the above, you will have a stable platform which is really USABLE and it will be the right time to add new features. What am I missing? ------------------ It starts with simple file I/O commands! assign(), reset(), rewrite(), ... Some "hackers" place then crazy calls to functions of a "C" library, out from GPC. I also received such suggestions in the past. The result? I am calling from a _undocumented_ Pascal Compiler a function inside a _undocumented_ C library. -- ??! 8-((( I also search for a simple command reference, where every procedure/function is listed with calling convention, etc. It is really hard to write any program (except "Hello world...") without knowing supported functions/procedures! Would be great if somebody could tell me where I can find a USABLE Pascal compiler for Linux. It should be TP/BP compatible as much as possible. Thanks in advance, Rainer Hantsch ---------------------------------------------------------------------- | Office address: | You may reach us by: | |--------------------------|-------------------------------------------| | ING. RAINER HANTSCH | Phone : +43 1 7988538 0 | | Khunngasse 21/1 | Fax : +43 1 7988538 18 | | A-1030 Wien/Vienna | BBS : +43 1 7988538 17 | | | e-Mail: hantschr@hantsch.co.at | | *** A U S T R I A *** | www : http://members.eunet.at/hantschr/ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------