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APPLE II DEVELOPMENT FORUM CONFERENCE LOG
Tuesday, October 6, 1992  10:00 p.m. Eastern Time
Topic:  Graphics & Animation Programming
Forum Leader:  Gary Jacobson (AFL GaryJ)

AFL GaryJ  Welcome to the Apple II Development Forum!
AFL GaryJ  Tonight, our scheduled topic, is Graphics and Animation
           programming!
AFL GaryJ  ADV is where you'll find STATE of the art techniques for doing
           lots of fun
AFL GaryJ  graphical things with your computer!  :)
GNO Jawaid <groan>
Sheppy     ** chuckle **
AFL GaryJ  (Well, I'm trying :)
AFL Marty  Pretty good intro :)
Sheppy     "Welcome to California.  Now go home!" <--- seen on bumper
           sticker. :)
AFC SteveB (Jay, did you wear your FNM shirt today? :)
AFA Jay    Steve, I didn't...too cold!
AFL GaryJ  Cold?  Did someone say cold?
AFL GaryJ  (I wish)
AFL GaryJ  Jay:  It was 95 here today.
AFA Jay    It was 31 when I got up this morning.
AFL GaryJ  brrr....
Sheppy     Huh.  Cold?  Not here.  Well, it did fall into the low 70s today. 
           GASP!! :)
GNO Jawaid It finally got cool here, too.
AFL Marty  It was really cold here this morning.
GNO Jawaid Does anyone know how the animation in Rastan works? How it's so
           smooth?
AFL GaryJ  Anyone here ever disassemble Rastan GS?
AFL GaryJ  Rastan is amazing, that's for sure.
AFL GaryJ  I'm not sure what technique they use (in Rastan)
Sheppy     I dunno either.  They're pretty good, though.
GNO Jawaid Whatever happened to Chris McKinsey anyway?
GNO Jawaid I mean, Chris used to be all over AOL.
Spottysoft ..indeed.  :)
Jim Murphy Chris has been really busy with classes and other real-life
           things.
Sheppy     Classes aren't real life.  This is.  Classes just _feel_ more
           real. :)
GNO Jawaid Nice choice of "computationally correct" words there, Jim. :-)
GNO Jawaid Wouldn't want to offend anyone here by calling us all 'geeks',
           eh?
GNO Jawaid :-)
AFA Jay    just don't call us normal ;)
Spottysoft Especially if we're from California  :)
GNO Jawaid Chris has some source or other for Rastan.. I guess I'll have to
           call him.
Sheppy     So, did anything wond'rus happen at the show?
GNO Jawaid TurboRez?
Sheppy     Uh, did anyone here even go? :)
Spottysoft DangardAce swears up and down there was a *working* prototype TRez
           board there.
Nuzz       I was there, and had a good time too
AFC SteveB There was.
GNO Jawaid So tell us about it!
AFC SteveB It was real nice...does some funky connecting with the
AFC SteveB motherboard, tho...graphics were amazing.
AFC SteveB And I'll let Jay or Mike take it from there as I gotta go :)
GNO Jawaid Same resolutions we have now, though, I believe, right?
Sheppy     Any stats on the board?  Like resolution and/or color count?
Nuzz       I can't help on specs of TRez, I didn't get that close
AFA Jay    Well, I think the guy said there are 7 or so thingies you patch
           onto your
AFA Jay    mother board...clip into chips and such things...
GNO Jawaid Ewewewew...
Spottysoft ack!
AFL Marty  There are some posts in AGR on the TurboRez, I believe.
AFA Jay    Yah, they needed it for timing and "other things"
GNO Jawaid ah hah!
AFA Jay    They did write a tool to help with programming it...
Sheppy     Figured there would be.
GNO Jawaid Question is does it work with QuickDraw?
AFA Jay    Right now they've got a slide show and GIF converter.
Nuzz       I think it did work with Quickdraw (sorta) and had a few
           additional calls
AFA Jay    Yah, it won't help anything that's already written...
AFA Jay    have to have the special calls in it.
Nuzz       I did see the portable GS though :)
GNO Jawaid How big was the portable?
AFA Jay    Tony's portable GS was neat.
Sheppy     Portable GS?  Ooooh... tell me about it.
Nuzz       The portable was in an old osborne or some such case
Nuzz       it was pretty small, Tont had to cut off the ends of the
           motherboard to get it to fit
Nuzz       it had a mono monitor hard drive, and 3.5 all in the case
AFA Jay    They keyboard was a GS keyboard without numeric keypad...
AFA Jay    and it folded up against the front to cover the screen and such
GNO Jawaid I believe a good portion of the GS motherboard at the front edge
           is only
GNO Jawaid for diagnostic testing.
GNO Jawaid A IIgs laptop would be awesome, esp. considering the very low
           power consumption
AFC DYAJim Couldn't you engineer all the chips on the GS down to only a
           few?
GNO Jawaid (esp. compared to a 68000- over 1/2 amp from those babies!)
Sheppy     Probably, yeah.
GNO Jawaid Yes, esp. if you dropped the slots.
Sheppy     Heck, just slap a handle on the box you got now, bolt your monitor
           to it, and
Sheppy     you have a luggable IIGS... :)
AFA Jay    Tony said the portable only cost about $200 extra of stuff after a
           GS with
AFA Jay    Zip and hard drive.
Nuzz       biggest laugh at the show was when some Mac company running Leggo
           Logo told me that his
Nuzz       software was "too sophisticated" to run on a II
AFC DYAJim no, the biggest laugh was when this woman kept telling me that I
           should upgrade
AFC DYAJim T2 to support system 7, as I'd get lots more sales that way
AFC DYAJim that's up there with the person who thought the system saver was a
           piece of
AFC DYAJim software
GNO Jawaid Shep - GNO 1.1 lets you suspend and bg a desktop application.
GNO Jawaid bwahaha
AFA Jay    so does this mean multiple desktop programs? :)
GNO Jawaid Um, no. 
GNO Jawaid That's what SwitchIt is for. :)
GNO Jawaid And amazingly enough, they seem to be working together finally. To
           be blunt,
GNO Jawaid I'm amazed.
GNO Jawaid I know my code, and that they work together is surprising.
AFL GaryJ  Jim, we were talking about Rastan GS earlier.  Have you ever dug
           into it to
AFL GaryJ  figure out what kind of graphics engine it uses to scroll the
           screen?
AFC DYAJim not really (I never got around to it), but I'd imagine it uses a
           huge unrolled
AFC DYAJim bank00/01 stack/dp based mother
GNO Jawaid In particular, I'm wondering how to do smooth (no flicker) sprite
           animation
GNO Jawaid on top of a moving background.
AFC DYAJim you keep the background in bank 00, scroll it etc
AFC DYAJim then combine it with your sprite and write to 01..
AFC DYAJim now depending on how fast your code is, I'd think that you could
           either
AFC DYAJim a) wait for every vbl or every other or a multiple and then do
           your animation
AFC DYAJim . depending on speed, etc, this might work, or it might tear and
           flicker.
GNO Jawaid Hmm. Think "Super Mario Bros", and you know what I'm aiming for.
AFC DYAJim b) draw to 01 w/ shadow off.  copy 01 onto itself with shadowing
           on once
AFC DYAJim your next frame is created.
AFC DYAJim b) is slower, but it always works
Nuzz       what ever happened to that guy at Kansas who was working on the
           super mario type game
GNO Jawaid Nuzz- he's the reason I'm doing this research :)
Nuzz       Oh. it looked real good in KC
AFC DYAJim For SMB, I think you'd be wise to tile it
GNO Jawaid I'd thought of that, but what if "Mario" goes in front of a cloud?
           Looks
GNO Jawaid really bad to have black there instead.
GNO Jawaid Perhaps just using the shadow off/ then shadow on/copy trick would
           work,
GNO Jawaid along with masks.
AFC DYAJim you want him to go behind clouds is that it?
GNO Jawaid _in front of_.
GNO Jawaid And other scenery.
AFC DYAJim oh..  I guess you could use a tiling variation still tho
AFC DYAJim with masks...
GNO Jawaid Straight tiling won't work; the tiles are 24x24 pixels, and that's
           a lot
GNO Jawaid of jumpiness.
AFC DYAJim yeah.. rastan would be a good example, eh? :)
AFC DYAJim scroll the background in bank 00.. someone should diss rastan or
           task force
GNO Jawaid the copy onto itself trick might be just what we're looking for.
AFC DYAJim if you don't use tiling then scroll your background in bank 00..
           rastan probabl
AFC DYAJim y uses tiles (of who knows what size) to build pixel maps and then
           uses the
AFC DYAJim pixel maps as backgrounds.  kinda like alien mind I believe
AFC DYAJim bank 0 I take it?
GNO Jawaid Greg's (Greg Hedger) has got DP scrolling in..
GNO Jawaid I think he maps to bank 1, but I'm not sure.  I left him mail and
           was
GNO Jawaid hoping he'd drop in on the conf.
AFL GaryJ  I don't think Rastan would use tiles, would it?
AFL GaryJ  (Looks like a giant bit-mapped background image)
AFC DYAJim To me it seems rastan most certainly uses tiles to build its
           backgrounds, but
AFC DYAJim that's just my opinion :)
AFC DYAJim to store such huge images on disk would take mega space, even with
           compression
AFC DYAJim and it would take even longer to load
GNO Jawaid Rastan has an LZSS compressor in it. Where do you think Chris
           McKinsey for
GNO Jawaid got his?
AFC DYAJim Chris got his from bill heineman.
AFC DYAJim I was not aware that john brooks also used bill's.
GNO Jawaid Did he? hmm..
AFC DYAJim I didn't know bill had written his that early.. but my sense of
           time may just
AFC DYAJim be all messed up :)
AFC DYAJim darn, I keep forgetting to ask bill how lzss uses btrees to search
           the ring
AFC DYAJim buffer..  eventually I guess I'll remember..
GNO Jawaid I think Chris got one from John, too.  LZSS is pretty common these
           days.
AFL GaryJ  Hmmm.... one of my DA's must be causing problems with Rastan.
AFC DYAJim Gary are you trying to launch it from the desktop??
AFL GaryJ  Yes.  It works fine under 6.0 if I boot with no DA's or Inits. 
           But if I boot
AFL GaryJ  normally, the keyboard quits working (no esc key, etc.)
AFC DYAJim You need bill's chess.system program.
AFC DYAJim I use it to launch ALL my P8 games from the desktop.
AFC DYAJim It works like a charm.
AFL GaryJ  What does that do, Jim?
AFC DYAJim It resets virtually everything (except for appletalk) so the P8
           programs can't
AFC DYAJim trample all over interrupt routines and everything.
AFC DYAJim short and sweet program
AFC DYAJim (and it uses an undocumented F8ROM call too :)
AFL GaryJ  :)
AFC DYAJim I live for stuff like that :)
AFL GaryJ  Oh!  That reminds me about $C078.  Did you find out any more
           Jay?
AFA Jay    Well, about C078, I went to school and played with this card...
AFA Jay    it's not altering C078...so I'm just gonna chalk it up as some
           strange
AFA Jay    quirk...
AFA Jay    This whole source is really quirky...he start using A in the
           beginning of
AFA Jay    his program, expecting it to be 0..but never actually setting it
           to 0.
AFC DYAJim you should post in ahw jay
Sheppy     Yeah, there's a good idea.  Somebody over there must know.
AFA Jay    I'm not really worried about it...it works fine without it...
AFA Jay    so I'm not gonna touch it or I might break it
GNO Jawaid Greg! He came!
GregH35662 sORRY I'm Late :)
GregH35662 Hi!
GNO Jawaid We were just discussing your project, in a roundabout way.
AFL GaryJ  I was sitting here running Rastan, and looking to see if they
           might have
AFL GaryJ  been able to use tiles.  Some parts it could obviously be tiles,
           but other parts, 
AFL GaryJ  like the background mountains and clouds, I'm not sure (good
           graphics in this
AFL GaryJ  game! :)
GNO Jawaid Anyway, Greg, you said you now do DP scrolling, right? 
GregH35662 Yup.
GNO Jawaid Where does the background sit?
GregH35662 At one speed.
GNO Jawaid Bank 0, bank 1, somewhere else?
GregH35662 What do you mean?
GNO Jawaid Several games use a technique where the background is scrolled in
           bank 0,
GNO Jawaid then copied to bank 1.
AFC DYAJim is the background in bank 00?
GregH35662 Background is just tiles.
GNO Jawaid Okay, here's a trick Jim just told me about.
GNO Jawaid 1) turn off SHR shadowing
GNO Jawaid 2) set up the frame in bank 01 shr memory
GNO Jawaid 3) wait for vbl
GNO Jawaid 4) turn on shadowing
GNO Jawaid 5) copy bank 01 SHR to itself.
GNO Jawaid (The above eliminates any chance of flicker)
AFC DYAJim (btw Jawaid, the background in 00 really doesn't need to be
           "copied to 01"
AFC DYAJim in the strict sense of the term copy)
AFL GaryJ  How so, Jim?
AFC DYAJim 5) you can be creative with.. use PEI, lda/sta $dp, or whatever
           you like
AFC DYAJim if you flip the right softswitches Gary then you can make 00 show
           up in 01
AFC DYAJim so when 01 is updated, 00 (bkg) is also done automatically, if I
           recall right
GNO Jawaid So, do you think the shadow trick fix will fix the flicker
           problems/
Russell12  Cool... I program the Apple IIc... am getting a IIgs in a few
           days
AFL GaryJ  (You'll love it)
AFL GaryJ  Apple IIc is a nice machine too.  I've always liked the IIc.
Russell12  Do you think it will be hard for me to learn 16-bit assembly?
GregH35662 What are you working on on the IIc Russell?
Sheppy     Do you already know 8-bit assembly?  If so, no, 16 bit is easy.
Russell12  I program 8-bit assembly arcade games on the IIc
Sheppy     Oh, no sweat.  Just some new modes, mostly.
AFL GaryJ  The 65816 assembly isn't too difficult to learn, but getting to
           know the 
AFL GaryJ  IIGS toolbox, and all the ins and outs of GS/OS programming takes
           a while :)
GregH35662 Cool, do you do any DHR stuff?
Russell12  I've done a demo program in DHR for myself.  But the drawing
           routions are slow
AFL GaryJ  That fun stuff, Russell!  (My favorite kind of programming)
Russell12  I've been reading the GS toolbox routines vol 1 and 2
Sheppy     You'll need volume 3.  The best stuff is in there.
AFA Jay    And of course GS/OS :)
Sheppy     (well, the _best_ stuff is in the 6.0 ref... :)
Russell12  I bought the GS mainly for the ability to program music and
           digi-sounds
Russell12  Are the super-hires graphics mode hard to program?
AFL GaryJ  A good book to get you started in Apple IIGS assembly (and an
           introduction to
AFL GaryJ  toolbox programming) is "Programming the Apple IIGS in Assembly
           Language"
AFL GaryJ  By Ron Lichtey and David Eyes.
GregH35662 Its much easier than the IIc graphics modes are :)
Sheppy     It's... linear! :)
Russell12  Linear!!! Great...  I'm sick and tired of using screen tables!!
GregH35662 :)
AFL GaryJ  I just wish there were more than one screen in SHR.
AFL GaryJ  (Like there is in DHR/HGR)
Sheppy     Same here. :)
Russell12  I do plan on buying "Programming the Apple IIGS in assembly"
GNO Jawaid You still use them, to avoid doing (row # * 160) :-)
Sheppy     Yeah, screen flipping would be nice.
Russell12  There's only one!!!
AFA Jay    Get a TurboRez, Gary :)
GregH35662 Get a TurboRez. It's supposed to support 3 pages.
AFA Jay    3 pages, separate pallette for each
Russell12  How do you smooth animation without the page-flipping technique?
Sheppy     Well, you do have shadowing.  That's like a page and a half. :)
GNO Jawaid We were just discussing how to do that :)
AFL GaryJ  It takes up processor time to do shadowing, though.
AFL GaryJ  (while page flipping does not)
Russell12  oh..
Sheppy     They figured that one out.  Took 'em a while, but they got it.
GregH35662 Compiled shapes help for smoothness too.
Russell12  Has anyone programmed music for the background while running their
           program?
GregH35662 Working on it :)
Sheppy     Well, interrupt-driven music routines...
GNO Jawaid The MidiSynth tool works on an interrupt-driven basis, and only
           takes about
GNO Jawaid 10-15% of your CPU.
GregH35662 I thought it was 30%.
GNO Jawaid Not if you use Bill Heineman's version :)
Sheppy     The official figure is about 15%, as I remember.
GregH35662 What about Tool 219 and Tool 220?
Sheppy     Ah.  Right. :)
Sheppy     BH's version, eh?  Hmmmm... I dunno.  Sounds hush-hush. :)
GNO Jawaid At any rate, Russell, ADV, AGR, and AOL in general is the place to
           be to
GNO Jawaid learn how to fully utilize the IIgs' features.
AFC DYAJim You can do background music with your own Soundsmith drivers too
AFL GaryJ  Well said, Jawaid.
Sheppy     Definitely.  You get to hang around with cool people like Jawaid. 
           :)
GNO Jawaid Bah.
Sheppy     :)
AFL GaryJ  LOL :)
Russell12  Anyone know of any good GS games to get me started?
Sheppy     Xenocide is pretty cool.
AFL GaryJ  Rastan has good graphics.
AFL GaryJ  (And music)
GregH35662 Space Ace has good animation.
AFC DYAJim Rastan and Task Force are good for hack-n-slash-n-shoot 'em up
           horizontal
AFC DYAJim scrollers.
GNO Jawaid I've always wanted a good IIgs version of PacMan. That'd be a good
           place
GNO Jawaid to start, project-wise.
Russell12  I can't really find any GS games in the stores any more.
Russell12  Can anyone help me out in locating some games?
GNO Jawaid Nobody can. Grab an issue of A+/inCider and dig through the
           mail-order 
GNO Jawaid listings.
GregH35662 Subscribe to either Resource Central, Incider, or GS-Plus.
GNO Jawaid (They should be paying me, as much as I plug them like this :-)
AFL GaryJ  Let's see, what's some other games.... Dark Castle GS, The
           Imortal,
AFC DYAJim Big Red Computer Club has a huge assortment of great classic GS
           games!
AFC DYAJim Check them out.
AFC DYAJim And get out of this world too!
GNO Jawaid Um, "Out of This World" the latest game by genius Bill Heineman.
GNO Jawaid And don't forget Pick'n'Pile. 
Russell12  I guess to build my GS library, I'm gonna have to spend $$$$
Sheppy     Dragon Wars is good.
AFL GaryJ  Is "Out of this world" available yet?
GNO Jawaid Yep, from BRCC, $49.95
GNO Jawaid I think it's a bit pricey.
GregH35662 Wait a while.
Sheppy     Jawaid's plugging again! :)
AFL GaryJ  My all time favorite game is still "Wings of Fury" (non-IIGS
           specific, of course :)
GNO Jawaid Oops. :)
GNO Jawaid And while we're at it, you'll need a good solid development
           environment.
AFL GaryJ  Right, Jawaid...
GNO Jawaid Get ORCA/M 2.0 assembler, and the GNO Multitasking Enivronment
           for
GNO Jawaid your shell/utilities.
AFL GaryJ  (plug plug :)
Russell12  Does anyone use MERLIN 8/16?
GregH35662 Nope.
AFL GaryJ  I used to, Russell.
Sheppy     I do sometimes.  Don't much go for it, though.
DYA Derek  I do - it's great :)  Actually I use Merlin 16+
Russell12  Is there a better assembler?
GNO Jawaid Merlin 16 is popular, esp. among the game programmer types. It's
           extremely
GNO Jawaid fast, but a good shell system will get you a lot of power.
AFL GaryJ  I think you'll get better support and state-of-the-art features
           with ORCA/M, however.
Sheppy     It's fast, but not even as friendly as Orca, which is pretty
           scary.
Russell12  I have learned MERLIN 8..  Gonna use 16+ real soon :)
GNO Jawaid That's an important point.  The IIgs is capable of a LOT... if you
           get the
GNO Jawaid right tools. IMHO, Merlin 16+ isn't one of those.
AFL GaryJ  If you want to do resources and that sort of thing, it's much
           easier to use OCRA.
AFL GaryJ  (Easier to do segmented programming, as well)
GregH35662 Speaking of resources, what's the scoop on Scriptedit for
           Foundation.
AFA Jay    Greg, ScriptEdit will be VERY awesome :)
AFC DYAJim ScriptEdit kicks.
Sheppy     I _need_ scriptedit! :)
GregH35662 I own Foundation. Why hasn't Scriptedit arrived?
AFC DYAJim the editor, the wannabe "shell", the whole thing! :)
GNO Jawaid Jim Murphy isn't quite done, last I'd heard.
GNO Jawaid We might be doing an assembler pretty soon.
Sheppy     Jawaid -- do it, really.  We could use a new one. :)
AFA Jay    and how is lcc? :)
GNO Jawaid Maybe.  I don't want to require people to use ORCA/M for lcc. :)
GNO Jawaid I'm gonna pick up a 486-50 before I continue work on lcc.
Russell12  lcc?
GNO Jawaid "low-cost" C compiler.  Probably free, but we'll see.
Russell12  oh...
GNO Jawaid If someone else says they'll do the support, I'll let it out for
           free.
Sheppy     Say, what kind of C is lcc, anyway?
AFC DYAJim Rotfl!
GNO Jawaid 100% ANSI/POSIX compliant C.
Sheppy     Ooooh, cool!  I'd dump Orca/C in a second if lcc works! :)
AFA Jay    if it increments longs normally, I'll take it :)
GNO Jawaid longword incrementing works just fine, Jay. I checked that first
           :)
GNO Jawaid It's close to being a beta-able thing, I just need floating point
           support
AFA Jay    Yay! :)
Sheppy     Longword incs don't work?  Hmmm... I'll have to look over my
           source files
GNO Jawaid and some new code in the front end.
Sheppy     for the code I'm porting.  Sigh... :(
AFA Jay    if you optimize -1 longword incs go 0000FFFF to 00000000
Sheppy     Ow!!
AFA Jay    both the ++ and x=x+1
Sheppy     Really?  Ah, man.  How do you get around it?
AFA Jay    if you optimize with either odd or even numbers, it'll be
           ok...forget which
AFA Jay    though :)
AFA Jay    I just did an asm {} segment...:)
GNO Jawaid BTW, GNO 1.1 (or shortly after) will have TCP/IP over LocalTalk
           and
GNO Jawaid serial line.
Sheppy     !!! Wow !!!
AFA Jay    TCP/IP for the GS? :)
Russell12  I have to get going too... do you guys meet here often?
AFA Jay    Tuesdays at 10pm Eastern, Russell
GNO Jawaid Derek Taubert is doing the work, and just showed me a transcript
           of him
GNO Jawaid bouncing 'ping' packets off his IIgs.
Sheppy     Yeah, maybe a long IncLong(long) function? :)
GNO Jawaid Shep- nah, do a macro
Sheppy     Ah.  Macro.  Even better.  :)
GNO Jawaid #define IncLong(val) asm { inc val    bne foo  inc val+2   foo:
           }
Sheppy     Thanks, Jawaid.  I'm logging that. :)
Sheppy     Do decrements work?
AFA Jay    I don't remember if they do or don't...
AFA Jay    easy enough to figure out though :)
GNO Jawaid Dunno. Probably the same bug.
Sheppy     Arrrggghhhh!
GNO Jawaid Possibly they do.. ORCA/C is real oogy inside.
AFA Jay    That's what I was thinking, it would make sense that decs wouldn't
           work..
AFA Jay    so they probably do.
AFC DYAJim can you really do a define like that Jawaid?
AFC DYAJim cool!!
GNO Jawaid Yeppers.
Sheppy     The code I'm porting has a huge macro which extracts a byte from a
           pseudo-
Sheppy     stack kept in a malloc'd block. :)
GNO Jawaid As long as IncLong is treated as a procedure, yeah. You can't
           inline that
GNO Jawaid like you can the existing ++ operator.
GNO Jawaid You cann't do   a = IncLong(x) for instance.
Sheppy     Just IncLong(x);.
GNO Jawaid Oh yeah, ORCA/C 1.3 has a lot of trouble with macro nesting.
GNO Jawaid But if you run into that Shep, then grap Dave Kopper's port of cpp
           from
GNO Jawaid pindarus. It works great.
Sheppy     Macro nesting?  Uh, don't think it should be a prob.
Sheppy     What's cpp?
GNO Jawaid C PreProcessor.
Sheppy     Where's pindarus?  Full address please.
GNO Jawaid It's the ANSI preprocessor we're going to use for lcc.
GNO Jawaid pindarus.cs.uiuc.edu. I don't know the network numbers off hand.
Sheppy     Ah, right.  Cool.  Um, has anybody ported a C++ preprocessor?
Sheppy     Don't need the numbers.  Thanx.
GNO Jawaid Shep- as soon as lcc is done, we'll see about g++.
Sheppy     Heh.  That's the one I was thinking of.
GNO Jawaid The 1.4.X version of g++ outputs C code.  Should work just dandy.
           Compile
GNO Jawaid times will be most heinous, but what the hey.
Sheppy     Well, they already are.
GNO Jawaid Here's a Mike Westerfield quote from GEnie:
GNO Jawaid "I could speed up ORCA/C's compile speed by 2 to 3 times, but I
           don't see how
GNO Jawaid I could justify the couple months effort it would take".
Sheppy     Pfft.  Isn't Orca/C written in Orca/Pascal?
GregH35662 He said that?
GNO Jawaid Yes, he did.
GNO Jawaid And all the Byteworks languages use linked lists for symbol
           tables...
GNO Jawaid LET'S SCAN THE ENTIRE LIST EVERYTIME WE WANT TO LOOKUP A VARIABLE
           NAME. Not!
GNO Jawaid Just throwing in a nice hash table symbol lookup would increase
           the speed
GNO Jawaid a LOT.
Sheppy     Heh.  No wonder it's so slow.  Ack!
Sheppy     Just writing it in assembly would help a lot.
GNO Jawaid For comparison, APW C is itself not 816 assembly. The compiler's
           object code
GNO Jawaid is pcode, and APW C has a pcode interpreter.  APW C is only a
           little slower
GNO Jawaid and ORCA C.  Anyone see the light here?
GNO Jawaid (APW C was written in some pseudo-C dialect that APW C can't
           compile).
GNO Jawaid Now, ORCA/C is good in that it's what we've got.
AFA Jay    I think if Mike get's a little competition, he'll reconsider the
           few months
AFA Jay    to improve it :)
Sheppy     Yeah.  Especially _free_ or _low-cost_ competition. :)
GNO Jawaid :)
GNO Jawaid Beagle Bros has stated that if there was a IIgs c++ they'd try to
           port
GNO Jawaid BeagleWorks.
Sheppy     Really?  Wow.  I'd like to see that.  Anything would be better
           than AWGS!
GregH35662 Whoa!
Sheppy     Go, Jawaid, go!  If not for you, for the Brothers Beagle.