Interpretive Pascal for Mac

Press, 21 August 1984, Page 29

Interpretive Pascal for Mac

. Apple Computer has introduced an interpretive Pascal language for the Macintosh personal computer, which the company says is ideal for students and novice programmers who wish to create their own applications. The Macintosh Pascal went on show for the first time at the National Computer Conference in Las Vegas. The program provides immediate feedback, speeding the learning process for students as well as reducing development time. The Macintosh Pascal lets users watch and interact with a program as it executes, enabling them to see the numbers and other expressions as they change. The user can enter and execute any amount of Pascal statements while the program is temporarily suspended. If the user changes the program, the modifications are seen immediately, making it easier to isolate and solve problem bugs. Thus the learning process becomes less complicated and is speeded'up, says Apple. As it is entered, each Pascal statement is checked by the program for proper syntax and displays all unrecognisable text-in special lettering. The user can also utilise this checking feature any time throughout program execution. Pascal keywords are automatically set in bold type with the text indented to show the logic structure of the program. For convenience, there is a Macin-

tosh clipboard, scrapbook and notepad for use during the editing of a program. Apple has provided access to all the Quickdraw routines available in the Macintosh ROM. These routines support the graphic capabilities of the Macintosh and Lisa personal computers. In addition, Macintosh system procedures, such as a mouse and keyboard routines, are available as standard functions in the Macintosh Pascal. The language is also compatible with Lisa Pascal and follows the lEEE standard for numeric calculations. However, the new Pascal does not support all of the Macintosh user features, such as menus, windows and dialog boxes. “Apple is working on a Pascal-based environment .that will provide the support of the missing Macintosh features. The new environment will allow the experienced application developers to quickly and more easily develop marketable software,” says the company. The Macintosh Pascal package includes two program disks, a user’s guide describing the user interface, a reference manual explaining the Pascal language syntax and a technical appendix involving the quickdraw and numerics libraries. The Macintosh Pascal will be available in the United States by late August and will be available internationally shortly after.