Jul 89 Mousehole
Volume Number: 5
Issue Number: 7
Column Tag: Mousehole Report
Mousehole Report 
By Rusty Hodge & Larry Nedry, Mousehole BBS
From: Frankh
Re: LSP Pascal
This isn’t really a flame, just an annoyance. I finally got the upgrade to LSP 2.1 from
the board, and the operation of the compiler is a lot better; there are fewer crashes
now. I realize that the compiler will crash if I don’t allocate enough stack and zone
memory, but that’s something the compiler should warn me about in a nice way - not
by crashing. The other gripe is with the debugger. It’s fine if you have a small program
you wish to debug (or if you have a LOT (>2 meg) of ram), but it’s useless for
intermediate to large programs. It would be better if the debugger was separate (as in
LSC) or at least an option (I know its a menu option - I mean a real option; you select
it, and its there. Deselect it and its gone - out of ram). LSP has many nice features, but
I don’t trust it. I hate wondering if the latest bug in my program is real, or an artifact
from the compiler. A compiler should be as bug free as possible; at the very least, it
should be robust enough not to crash without warning. I would rather use LSP, but I
find myself writing important code with TML; it has yet to crash on me. [Gee, I guess
you don't want me to tell you that you need to buy 2 Megs of RAM to begin to use System
7.0! -Ed]
From: Wesm
Re: Allegro Apple Crisped
Today my darkest suspicions were confirmed about Apple’s purchase of Coral Software.
Used to be that one could call up the nice folks at Coral and ask most any question at all
about their products, and they’d be happy to talk. Today, I wanted to find out how I
could simulate timer interrupts in Allegro, so I called Coral, only to be told that they
could no longer provide technical support over the phone--orders from Apple. Now,
it seems reasonable to me that, if I have invested nearly $1000 in a piece of software,
I should be able to receive technical support.
One of the reasons I chose this particular Lisp was the flavors add-on module, so that
my wife could work on her thesis at home, and port it to the TIs at school. We were
both very upset. So I called Apple Customer Relations...Hah! It seems that now,
whenever I have a question about my $1000 Lisp, I’m supposed to call up an Apple
***DEALER***, and they’ll get the answer back to me off of AppleLink, pronto, you
betcha. Being a mere academic type, not a certified developer, I don’t have access to
AppleLink myself. How many dealers do you think can answer my questions about
Apple Allegro Common Lisp? That’s OK, take your time, I can wait. Have you ever
heard of such ******? It’s a crying shame. Allegro is a nice piece of work, the
people at Coral always seemed genuinely interested in hearing from me. Do other
companies also treat their customers this poorly? I’d be interested to hear any
comments. [That's nothing. You think that is bad? Look what happened to APDA when
Apple took that over! And that is supposed to service certified developers. At the recent
Developer conference, the APDA booth was only occupied from the hours of 4 pm to 6
pm and you couldn't buy anything there, only place orders! APDA always was poor on
technical support, but now poor looks fantastic in comparison. And I never did get my
MPW 3.0 final! When Apple takes over, you can forget technical service! -Ed]
From: Rguerra
Re: cdev “shell”
It occurs to me that writing and debugging cdev’s would be greatly simplified if the
programmer could simply place the cdev unit into a supporting shell program that
would emulate the function of the control panel. This shell would send the appropriate
cdev messages to the user’s cdev unit. The programmer using LSC, LSP, or even SADE
could step through the instructions of the cdev as per usual with an application. Has
anyone ever seen such a beast? If so, would you be willing to share it with the rest of
us? If one doesn’t exist yet, what would go into writing one? Any comments? Rich
From: Ctli
Re: Res Error Proc (Fw by Sysop)