America Online APPLE II DEVELOPMENT FORUM CONFERENCE LOG Tuesday, August 28, 1990 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time Topic: Complete Pascal with Special Guest, Vince Cooper of Complete Technology Forum Leader: Dave Sugar (AFL Dyfet) AFL Dyfet Okay, I believe we are now ready to get started :) AFL Dyfet Good evening and welcome to the Apple II Development Forum Conference. We will AFL Dyfet be discussing Complete Pascal tonight with our special guest, Vince Cooper of AFL Dyfet Complete Technology. We will be using protocol starting now! This means that AFL Dyfet if you wish to ask a question, enter a '?' on a line by itself, AFL Dyfet and if you wish to respond/comment on the current question, AFL Dyfet enter a '!' on a line by itself. I will now turn the floor over AFL Dyfet to our guest, Vince, who can explain to you what Complete Technologies is, AFL Dyfet and what their relationship with TML, and TML Pascal II users will be. VCooper Thanks Dave! VCooper Hello everyone! VCooper My name is Vince Cooper and I am the president of a new company called VCooper Complete Technology, Inc. Some of you may know me as the former A2 GS products VCooper manager from TML Systems. VCooper We are now in the business of publishing development tools for the IIGS with VCooper the former TML Pascal II and TML Basic being the first products we have VCooper brought to market. VCooper We have updated the Pascal product to fix some problems in the text editor VCooper and have recently released Complete Pascal 1.0, and are working hard on VCooper Complete Pascal 2.0 which is to be a full blown upgrade of the product. VCooper We will do some work on Basic after the first of the year to correct some VCooper massive problems there, however, we felt the current market dictated that VCooper we work on the Pascal product first. VCooper Basicly what has happened is that TML Systems felt that their company was VCooper better off to focus their attentions on creating new and inovative products VCooper for the Macintosh and that you, their former customers were better off with VCooper another company handling their former IIGS products. VCooper The last few months at TML Systems all development and support attention was VCooper spent in the direction of the Macintosh and they, nor I, felt this was fair VCooper to their many many loyal IIGS customers. VCooper Therefore, on the first of July we started Complete Technology, and purchased VCooper the rights to TML's IIGS product line and and started immediate work to make VCooper the products the best that we could for IIGS developers. We feel we have VCooper corrected the most drastic problem in Pascal (you couldnt edit source) and VCooper are now working hard on the other known problems as well as some enhancements VCooper that I felt were warranted... VCooper As far as technical support and updates go, we have institued a support VCooper program for TML's former clients with our company to open a support channel VCooper for you, and to make updates and upgrades available in the future. VCooper Unfortunately due to many different circumstances we could not offer free VCooper updates and support to all of their former clients, therefore, the support VCooper program and update offer that we have put together has a nominal charge VCooper associated with it. VCooper We would like to have been able to do this for free for everyone since VCooper the previous preformance of the publisher left a bit to be desired in the VCooper support area, however, we just couldnt do it for several thousand people and VCooper stay in business very long. VCooper Plans? Well, as stated we are working on an upgrade to the Pascal product VCooper to bring it in line with what we feel a professional quality development tool VCooper should be. We will then start working on Basic to correct its many problems VCooper and bring it up to date with the current operating system used on the IIGS. VCooper The Basic work will be a little more intense since it also involves a VCooper conversion of development systems, however, we feel we can have something VCooper accomplished sometime early next year. Not the news some of you wanted to hear VCooper but better than you would have heard under the former circumstances. VCooper with that, I'll hand this back to Dave and see if I can handle any questions VCooper he or any of you might have for me tonight. AFL Dyfet I for one feel you have a strong series of products to work with, and hope that AFL Dyfet you can overcome some of the negative impressions left by TML Systems in the AFL Dyfet market place. I think now is not a time to dwell on the mistakes of the past, AFL Dyfet but to look at the future for these potentially superb products. This is, in AFL Dyfet many ways, about the best thing that could have happened for TML Pascal and AFL Dyfet Basic. I believe that A2 has the first question. GA A2... A2GS 2 brief Q's....1) Any plans for supporting C? A2GS In the long run of course, GA VCooper In the very long run, maybe. Personally I feel there are already two good VCooper C compilers available and I would rather see our company pursue something VCooper that isnt already there such as Fortran, or to add an assembler to our product VCooper line.. AFL Dyfet (Just so long as you keep the nightmare of Cobol away from the IIgs :) AFL Dyfet And your 2nd Q, A2? VCooper No Cobol, please! :) A2GS 2) What is your view of the II's current status and future? A2GS GA VCooper I feel the IIGS has a bright future or I wouldnt be here... We've made a VCooper substancial financial investment in taking over these products and setting VCooper up a company to support and maintain them. Obviously we wouldnt have done VCooper this if we didnt feel it was going to be worthwhile in the long run. VCooper GA AFL Dyfet Okay, Omega Man, you have the floor now... Omega Man does/will the resource editor allow you to save sound and picture resources? GA SteveB That would be nice! Omega Man :) VCooper Right now it doesnt. We are in the process of deciding what we want to do with VCooper the resource editor. I'm not sure if we should enhance it to handle many VCooper different types of resources, or if we couldnt better spend the time and VCooper resources in enhancing the compiler so that it can handle OMF files from VCooper outside sources and other options that it now doesnt have. As with any VCooper development company our resources are limited. It might be better for us to VCooper leave high level resource editing and creation to speciality products such VCooper as Genesys and others and stick to the compilers. What we have now is enough VCooper to get a basic program up and running. It doesnt handle everything, and could VCooper probably use a small bit of enhancing, but I doubt you'll ever see anything VCooper from us that is as indepth as Genesys is in handling resource generation. VCooper GA Omega Man ga Froo AFL Dyfet Okay, Frooddude, you have the floor now...GA... Frooddude Ok.... Vince, who are the people behind the "We" you have been speaking of? VCooper Well, at this time the people making the decisions are myself and a couple of VCooper folks that have invested money. I've also sent offers to a couple of VCooper programmers that I hope to bring online soon to work on our linker and on our VCooper Basic product. right now I'm doing all of the programming and support and VCooper that is just a bit to much for one guy to handle. We also have a couple of VCooper girls that work here in the office handling phone calls and paper work so that VCooper I dont screw things up too bad... :) Frooddude Ok, thanks. AFL Dyfet Okay, Michael, you have the floor now...GA... Michael515 Will you have a Direct Connect area in ADV soon? VCooper We've spoken to Dave about that and some things are working behind the scenes VCooper for online support here on AO. VCooper GA VCooper (Right now you can catch us in the Pascal folder in the Let's Discuss area.) GA AFL Dyfet Hmm...there are a few things in the works, yes ;)... Shadow100 About when will v1.0 be ready to send out and how much will that small upgrade Shadow100 be. VCooper 1.0 is already shipping, sans nice looking labels. The support program costs VCooper $29.95 for Pascal customers and $19.95 for Basic customers. There are VCooper some letters containing information about what is going on being mailed out VCooper to all of TML's former clients, although this is moving a little slower than VCooper we would like. If you're really curious we have posted the letters here online VCooper in the Pascal folder, inside a folder titled News From Complete Technology. VCooper GA Shadow100 Thanks. Kerry C2 Whats will v2.0 offer over the current v1.0 of Pascal? VCooper 2.0 will offer a linker that allows you to link asm and c subroutines to VCooper your Pascal programs, or generates Pascal files that can be linked to your VCooper asm or C programs. It will also offer some enhancement in the resource VCooper editor although as I stated these enhancements will not be bringing it inline VCooper with some of the resource specific products like Genesys. VCooper It will also correct some problems that we have found to be our fault in VCooper the existing editor and compiler. VCooper (By our fault I mean we are now accepting responsibility for things that VCooper were wrong in the origional release which of course we didnt write.) VCooper GA AFL Dyfet Go ahead Omega Man... Omega Man will the 2.0 upgrade be free (to 1.0 users)? VCooper We're not sure what the price will be at this time. Please understand that VCooper you are not buying version 1.0. It is simply thrown in as an enducement to VCooper get folks to join the support program. VCooper We will ONLY offer future updates and upgrades to those that do join the VCooper support system. This is the only manner in which we can stay in business VCooper and support thousands of people that didnt purchase software from our company. VCooper Kind of a drag I know, but also a fact of business life... VCooper GA Omega Man sounds cool, :) ...ga... Kerry C2 Do you have plans for improving the size of source code files generated Kerry C2 by the compiler, such as an optimizer in future versions? VCooper Once we have improved the linker then we'll look at licensing some things that VCooper will make this possible. A few things that are not possible now will become VCooper reality once we have a new linker in the system. There are existing utilities VCooper that can be used to decrese the size of the load files and such... I've VCooper never tried to use what is there now, so I cant say for sure if they work or VCooper not on what the compiler system is generating right now. Some of you may VCooper have given it a try and may be able to answer this. This is not an area that I VCooper have checked out in depth yet. There were too many aligators in the swamp for VCooper me to look at the ducks... :) VCooper GA Kerry C2 Thanks. AFL Dyfet Okay, RobertHess, you have the floor now... RobertHess I realize that at this time, you have your hands full, but is there a RobertHess glimmer in your eye of future products and directions? Do you see your RobertHess company just being in the develpment tools business, or might you RobertHess also look towards 'general' applications as well? GA VCooper Right now we're just looking at development tools and utilites. Since we VCooper came into being with an existing product line, something most companies dont do VCooper we havent taken a long look at application programs or anything like that VCooper yet. I never say never, but its not in the business plan right now. VCooper We do plan to look at another language or an assembler, but that's still many VCooper months away. VCooper GA RobertHess Thanks, (looking forward to a Modula-2 :-) GA VCooper ( I thought someone just released a Modula-2, but I may be wrong..) AFL Dyfet Okay SteveB, you have the floor now... SteveB Ok-- I noticed AWSOME pastinng in CP v1.0. The Cutting still stinks, thought.. SteveB Are you planning to fix this? :) SteveB (Dumb Question :) VCooper Yes, however, we're waiting to see what, if any, corrections are in the VCooper next version of system software. CP 1.0 cuts and deletes much better than VCooper its counter part, Pascal II, however, we and our beta testers admit there are VCooper still some problems there with large chunks. We havent found any scrollbar VCooper freezing or any of the other problems, however, at least in 98% of all cases. SteveB I'm a Beta tester :) SteveB GA- Thanks :) VCooper I wont say they wont ever freeze, but nothing like what was in the original VCooper releases of this software. We did find some problems there with the way the VCooper program was coded and corrected them. VCooper GA AFL Dyfet Okay, go ahead Omega Man... Omega Man Did you correct the problem with the Case statements (they couldnt handle multiple numbers.. like Case numer of 45..100 VCooper that is not a bug, but it is the way this particular implimentation works. VCooper That IS something we are looking at changing, but I've not even looked at VCooper the source code in that part of the compiler yet. If we can get to it, we'll VCooper handle that in the 2.0 release. VCooper You can code around that problem, and if you're having trouble send me some VCooper email and I'll get you some code fragments that show you how to can work around VCooper the limitation. VCooper GA RobertHess First a comment on the previous question... case ranges are not part RobertHess of 'standard' pascal, but are implemented by a couple compilers. RobertHess ...and TML 'did' document theirs as being one of them... now my ? RobertHess Vince, I assume that many of your 'support' questions are still in RobertHess the relm of 'ToolBox' programming on the GS, rather then actual RobertHess problems with your product. What ideas or methods do you have for RobertHess dealing with this? How much of a burden is this proving on your RobertHess overall support efforts? GA VCooper Well, I'd like to see some of the book publishers update their existing VCooper books and I'd like to see some new books done on programming with resources. VCooper However, right now, most of the questions we're getting are on how to deal VCooper with and get around some of the problems that were in the original release of VCooper the compiler. I believe with our first update, and our future upgrade, we VCooper will correct that and go back to answering general programming type questions. VCooper I'd MUCH rather answer those types of questions even though they dont really VCooper have anything to do with the tool being used to create the program... :) VCooper GA RobertHess :-> yeah, I know what you mean... GA AFL Dyfet Okay Kerry, GA...And then Steve will have the last Q for tonight... Kerry C2 I've never been able to get Real2Integer in TMLUtils library to work correctly, Kerry C2 has this/will this bug/feature be fixed in future versions? VCooper It is a bug, and yes, we'll fix that in 2.0. VCooper Right now you can call SANE and use a call that will accomplish much the VCooper same thing. VCooper GA Kerry C2 I use SANE to do the conversions. SteveB Will you fix the Resoource Editor's problem of messing up Resource files when.. SteveB you edit a menu resource? Is this a bug? :) VCooper It's a bug, but we're not absolutely sure whos... Right now we are aware of VCooper some problems in the Resource Manager that cause trouble when you are changing VCooper the size of a resource which is what happens when you edit a menu with our VCooper editor. I'm sure some of the problem is also in CP's code. We'll be fixing VCooper this as soon as we get some updated system software and get the word that VCooper the problem we know about in the Resource Manager has been fixed. Dave Lyons Steve, what sort of messing-up happens? SteveB When executing the Progam, I get an error "Unable to open Resource Fork". SteveB And then some Error numbers. Kerry C2 Whenever I edit menu resources, the rest of the file becomes corrupted Kerry C2 and useless. If you don't use menu resources you should be ok now. VCooper There are some other problems with some things being off in the resource VCooper editor that ARE our fault and only our fault that we will be repairing soon. VCooper We'll get the word out to our customers in the support program as soon as VCooper something is done. VCooper GA SteveB Thanks :) AFL Dyfet Okay, I would like to thank our guest, Vince, for attending tonight....it was AFL Dyfet much good news you have brought.... AFL Dyfet I know you need to leave shortly, so if you have any closing comments? VCooper Not really... Just would like to say that it has been a real pleasure to VCooper talk to everyone and if you have further questions for me you're welcome to VCooper post them in the Pascal folder here in the Let's Discuss area. I check that VCooper area a couple of times daily and answer any questions. Also for those that VCooper are interested we are also doing some work on the manual and will be making VCooper some improvements there. Wont do those of you that already have it much good, VCooper but future people that use the product wont go through the same cold sweats VCooper that some of you did... :) VCooper Thanks folks! its been a real pleasure! Kerry C2 Thanks for your time and help, and good luck!! AFA Gary J Thanks, Vince! VCooper Good night, everyone!