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From: rick@uwmacc.UUCP (the absurdist)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Is borland abandoning Macintosh?
Message-ID: <2042@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Nov-87 12:54:38 EST
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.2042
Posted: Mon Nov 30 12:54:38 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 3-Dec-87 04:51:07 EST
References: <1394@bgsuvax.UUCP> <7576@prls.UUCP> <1674@uqcspe.OZ>
Reply-To: rick@unix.macc.wisc.edu.UUCP (The Absurdist)
Organization: UW-Madison Academic Computer Center
Lines: 27

>In article <7576@prls.UUCP> gardner@prls.UUCP (Robert Gardner) writes:
>However, to be brief, he was VERY disappointed with compatability
>between the two products. I was quite surprised to hear this, since
>you would think that the main motivation for doing the port was to give
>customers access to that large body of IBM Turbo code.

Turbo Pascal for the Mac is a fairly straight implementation of
Lisa Pascal; the major changes are (1) additon of a unit number
to the header of a UNIT declaration, and (2) some minor changes
in the syntax of compiler pseudo comments.  Moving between the
Lisa and MPW Pascal dialects (both from Apple), Turbo, TML, and
LightSpeed is quite trivial.  Generally once you have changed the
compiler directives and the unit declarations statements the only thing
left is that LightSpeed conversions need a rewrite of the initialization
code, since they automatically initialize some things that the other 4
compilers leave to be explicitly initialized.

IBM Turbo code, as exemplified by a 40-diskette source code library
I have access to here, is largely worthless;  90% of it is using
tricks involving stuffing values into registers and calling an
interrupt, or writing directly into memory locations, etc.;  it
would be shaky enough on a non-clone MS-DOS machine, let alone on
a non-DOS machine.  The stuff which qualifies as "Pascal" rather
than "Turbo Pascal" generally runs fine.
-- 
Rick Keir -- all the oysters have moved away -- UWisc - Madison
"Watch the skies...."