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Posted By

MMS
on 2012-08-13
17:18:37
 Re: interesting'n'funny stuff

Well, maybe little less funny, but more serious, as a programming...

We spent some time discussing the BASIC Editors and the Compliers after them.
Back to 1983 there was a package from Nick Gammon called G-Pascal (transferred to Plus/4 too, without too much hype) that was called at that time one of the most comprehensive and fast package on C64.
Right now a guy reverse engineered the original G-Pascal source code (that is an editor and compilercompiler) to provide the program in CC65 format. Just great, as I had the feeling, that some commands were just not perfect in the Plus/4 version.
http://kildall.apana.org.au/~cjb/G-Pascal/gpascal.a

Reading the manual, I understood, what we really missed. The Runetime packagage with the interperter! without that there is no possiblity to run the compliled program alone (yeah, that made this tool little less useful for us back in the 90s)
It increases by 6KB the P-Code, size increase still comparable to Austrospeed (or less?).

http://www.lyonlabs.org/commodore/onrequest/GPascalUserManual.pdf

Well, if we would have the runtime library for the Plus/4 version, we may have the great "not cross tool" development area for Plussy too.
Certainly crosstools are easier to use. but with that sourcecode (Pascla--> P Code) it would be possible to create P-code out of the crosstool Basic Editors, and then it is structured programming and not BASIC any more happy

Runtime was sold separately for a whopping 39USD, though with that you allowed to create fast, even commercial games or tools (Pascal can make it happen, but well, Autrospeed could be too)
http://www.gammon.com.au/GPascal/GPascal%20News2.pdf

and the discussion on the matter between the original developer and the hacker :-)
http://www.gammon.com.au/forum/bbshowpost.php?bbsubject_id=11203

aahh, sorry for the long and not funny post grin



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