home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
-
-
- SURPAS SUPPLEMENTARY DOCUMENTATION
- for SURPAS-86 V1.00 (MS-DOS)
-
- Copyright (C) 1987 by
- Tixaku Pty Ltd
-
-
-
- 1. Distribution and licencing.
- ------------------------------
-
- This package is NOT Public Domain nor is it FREEWARE, although
- its distribution is similar to that of "freeware".
-
- The basic difference between the license for SURPAS and that
- of software that is freeware is that the use of SURPAS beyond a
- free trial period, is subject to a low mandatory usage royalty
- payment instead of a voluntary contribution. Unlike most commer-
- cial software vendors, we believe that you are entitled to a test
- drive with our software. On the other hand, like many commercial
- software vendors, we feel that if you continue using our software
- you should pay us for the privilege. The price you pay should
- still be fair, but it should not be free.
-
- Use of SURPAS (or SPAS87) beyond ten days of first use of the
- program, the "free trial period", is subject to a mandatory usage
- royalty payment of $20.00 (twenty dollars) per computer console
- (CRT) on which it may be used simultaneously.
-
- This usage royalty payment must be forwarded directly to Tixaku
- Pty. Ltd. at the address indicated at the end of this document.
- The free trial period is intended to allow you to try the program
- before paying for it. If at the end of the free trial period, you
- decide you do not want to pay the usage royalty, this may be done
- provided all copies of the program which are or will be in your
- possession are never used by you again. Even in this case they
- may be further distributed.
-
- Obviously, even though payment is legally mandatory, we are rely-
- ing on your honesty, because in most cases, we do not have much
- capability to enforce it. Remember that your payment will help us
- to afford to develop other fine programs that you may also be in-
- terested in using.
-
- The program SURPAS and its documentation is copyrighted by Tixaku
- Pty. Ltd. We give restricted permission to make unlimited copies
- for your personal use. We also give restricted permission to make
- unlimited number of copies of the entire package for distribution
- to others. This includes making the package available for others
- to download from non-commercial electronic bulletin boards.
-
- Distributed copies of this package must not be modified in any
- way, except for dividing it up into several files that must be
- made available at the same time, and all copies must contain all
- the files included in the list below.
-
- No charge whatsoever, except for a nominal copying fee and the
- cost of the media (diskette etc.), may be demanded or received
- for such distribution.
-
-
- 1. Distribution package overview
- --------------------------------
-
- You will find the following files in your package:
-
- README.DOC The file you are currently reading.
-
- SURPAS.COM This file is the actual SURPAS Pascal system. It
- contains the editor, the compiler and the run-time
- package.
-
- SURPAS.HLP The help message file. This file contains the help
- messages displayed by the HELP command.
-
- SURPAS.ERM The error message file. This file contains the
- error messages displayed by the compiler when it
- locates an error.
-
- SPAS87.COM The 8087 version of SURPAS. If your computer is
- equipped with the 8087 chip you will probably want
- to use this version of SURPAS instead of the standard
- version,since it offers significant execution speed
- improvements on floating point operations (from
- 10 to 100 times faster), as well as better precision
- and exponent range (15 significant digits, 1E-300
- to 1E+300). The 8087 version is fully source code
- compatible with the standard version.
-
- INSTALL.COM The INSTALL program. If you have got an "uncon-
- figured" copy of SURPAS, i.e. a copy which is not
- set up for any specific terminal or computer sys-
- tem, then before you can use it, you must install
- it using this program. If you try to run an uncon-
- figured copy, you will simply get an error message.
- The INSTALL program is fully self-explaining, but
- to answer the questions asked by it you will proba-
- bly have to consult your system documentation. Note
- that the 8087 version is always shipped as an
- unconfigured copy, and thus it cannot be used be-
- fore you have installed it. If you wish, you may
- also use the INSTALL program to customize an alrea-
- dy installed copy to suit your individual needs.
-
- INSTALL.TRM Datafiles used by INSTALL. These files contain
- INSTALL.DAT configuration data for up to 50 different terminals
- and computers. Note that INSTALL will not run if
- these files are missing.
-
- CALC.PAS Demonstration program source text. This program
- acts as a calculator. It allows you to enter nume-
- ric expressions and have them evaluated.
-
- HEXDUMP.PAS Demonstration program source text. HEXDUMP will
- output a hex listing of any file to any other file
- or the printer.
-
- PRIMES.PAS Demonstration program source text. A short program
- which computes all prime numbers between 1 and
- 30000.
-
- QSORT.PAS Demonstration program source text. QSORT generates
- a list of random numbers and then sorts them using
- the quicksort algorithm.
-
- CROSSREF.PAS Demonstration program source text. CROSSREF outputs
- a listing and a cross-reference map of any SURPAS
- source text.
-
- MSLIB.PAS MS-DOS function call support routines. This include
- file contains a number of subroutines which may be
- used to access various MS-DOS functions not direct-
- ly supported by SURPAS.
-
- Before using SURPAS, we strongly advice that you make a backup
- copy of this disk. To generate a SURPAS work disk, copy SUR-
- PAS.COM, SURPAS.HLP and SURPAS.ERM onto a blank disk along with
- any other system programs you may require (e.g. COMMAND.COM,
- FORMAT.COM and CHKDSK.COM). If you are stressed for disk space,
- you may omit SURPAS.HLP and SURPAS.ERM, but then the HELP command
- will not work and the compiler will only output error numbers.
-
-
-
- 2. SURPAS-86 V1.00 highlights
- -----------------------------
-
- SURPAS V1.00 will automatically detect constants used as array
- indices and optimize the code accordingly. For instance, the
- assignment "a:=data[b]" will generate less code if b is a con-
- stant than if b is a variable. Furthermore, if b is a constant
- which is out of range, an out of range error will be reported
- during compilation, not during execution.
-
- When compiling to a disk file (PROGRAM and OBJECT commands),
- SURPAS V1.00 uses all available memory as a code buffer, thus
- keeping time consuming disk access at a minimum. The PROGRAM and
- OBJECT commands will therefore "feel" much like the COMPILE and
- RUN commands, except that the entire program code is dumped into
- the code file in one go when the compilation is completed. For
- large programs this will effectively double the compilation
- speed.
-
- SURPAS V1.00 allows programs with overlays to be executed in
- "direct mode", i.e. from a RUN command. When a program with
- overlays is compiled in direct mode, the name(s) of the overlay
- file(s) will be the current file name with its type changed to
- 000, 001, etc. If no current file name is established, the names
- will be WORK.000, WORK.001, etc. The current file name is set by
- the LOAD and NAME commands.
-
- The software floating point routines in SURPAS V1.00 have been
- optimized to use CPU registers extensively.
- SURPAS does its software number crunching faster and with more
- significant digits than all other Pascals.
-
-
- 3. Comments and suggestions
- ---------------------------
-
- If you have any comments to the SURPAS package and/or its docu-
- mentation, e.g. improvements you would like to see, or bugs you
- may have spotted, please don't hesitate to contact us. Our ad-
- dress is:
-
- Tixaku Pty Ltd or phone our BBS on
- P.O. Box 373 2-631-8603 24 hours
- Wentworthville
- NSW 2145 (v21, v22, v23 and v22bis)
-
- AUSTRALIA