PLWIN
Bill Buckels
>Hi Bill!
Hi Richard,
Thanks for the excellent response. Unfortunately things appear very
necrophilic in here or at least atrophicly polluted with the smell of
elitism so I very much appreciate you opening some windows.
Anyway I will edit the gist of what you and some others wrote on the Death
of PL/I and combine it with what I have observed here and place it on
www.cpm8680.com probably with a headstone graphic and a question mark.
I have all the PL/I compilers you mention and the Visual Age stuff from the
IBM ftp site etc.
Remember Peter's thread on comp.os.cpm, and Herb and I were chatting on the
phone last night about PL/M a little too, so I have lots to say.
>I hope you find this "one person's take on PL/I" to be helpful. And thanks
>for helping keep the old software alive on all of your great websites.
There is still room for PL/I in today's micro world. A suitable version
would provide Win32 support and output in pdf or html as well as text. It
wouldn't take much to extend the syntax of the DR versions to interface with
MinGW or cygwin by means of a pre-processor, grammar or whatever and a link
libary or two.
I enjoyed 3GL's like Clarion 2 and I am not sure that I liked what M$oft did
with BASIC when they made it Visual.
Bill
Bill Buckels
>IBM has a very different way of doing things than Sun.
Yes they sure do:(
Thanks Glen for the excellent responses to my post. Yours and Richard's
provided much insight. I am not sorry at all that I made the offer to write
an assembly routine despite the naivity of my futile gesture:)
This gcc project that some OP's mention has been going-on since 7 years ago
does not sound like what I am after at all so I am having some thoughts
about something or other and you probably already know what is on my mind at
this point:)
I wonder who owns the rights to PL/I ???
Bill
Peter Flass
I understand Henrik is making progress, but he could use lots of help.
>
> I wonder who owns the rights to PL/I ???
>
The same people that own the rights to C, i.e. no one. The Multics PL/I
compiler, written in PL/I, is open source if anyone wants to play with
it. PL/I(F) is too, but it's in ancient assembler. It's too bad the
source for PL/I-86 hasn't yet turned up.
Richard Brady
[snip]
> It's too bad the
> source for PL/I-86 hasn't yet turned up.
Mr. Flass,
Do I understand that you want the source code for the DRI PL/I compiler?
I did make disassemblies and decompiles of the libraries. Many years
ago, after DRI began morphing to other companies, there was a fellow in
Monterey (not sure of that, maybe Pacific Grove) that continued to sell
DRI product. He claimed to have the source code to the DRI PL/I
compiler. I had his name, address and company name at one time, but I
no longer remember where I wrote it down. When I tried to contact him
many years ago, he had quit the business.
Richard Brady
Peter Flass
Source code would be nice. I don't know what the compiler was written
in, though I would suspect PL/M. Disassemblies are good to fix
occasional problens, and better than nothing, but no substitute for source.
If I had real hope I could post on comp.sys.cpm, or whatever the list
is. If the actual sources still exist they're probably tucked in a box
in someone's garage or basement, dropping bits onto the floor.
Otherwise they would probably have surfaced.
Bill Buckels
>It's not "mistakenly" written. That was one of the original accomplishments
>of PL/I, and still applies.
Thanks for clearing that up. Some other respondents to that thread indicated
that assembly language would be required. So I guess they may be mistaken
and you are correct?
>The reason? PL/I is rich in features and in data types. As well, many of
>the things designed in PL/I were far in advance of the time, so the
>features have been there that were lacking in other
languages.
I do appreciate 3GL like Clarion 2 as I said. Pity the common man can't
afford a compiler!
>Why do you think that professional software should be given to you free?
Current copies of language products should be free for evaluation and
personal use. It is a buyer's market. It is a belief rather than a thought
unless you say otherwise, then you will probably be correct again as well:)
>Peter Flass's site is undergoing some change. When it is finished, the
>link will become valid again.
He told me something different. Again you may be right:)
Bill
Bill Buckels
Re: Fetch a routine from a specific DD
>Please stop to pollute this post for respect to the one has a real question
>... in PL/I or in other language.
Pierre,
I moved to a different thread to accomodate your request, but I can see that
OP's did not. I apologize profusely for any of them who like myself also
have imaginary questions. Most of my questions on PL/I will continue to be
imaginary until I get a working version of the current offering:)
>If you can... I mean if it is not sickly
No I think I can stomach more discussion on PL/I but thanks for your
concern:)
BTW I visited your website and noted that you have 2 products; E>>Comp and
E>>Scan.
I saw an Elephant and some Archie Comix but could not tell if these were
written in PL/I and what platforms they run-on and what the price was. I
assume this is a hobby site is it? Is the PL/I source code available for
review if so? If it is of the current version that is.
Bill
Bill Buckels
"Peter Flass" <Peter...@Yahoo.com> wrote:
>Source code would be nice. I don't know what the compiler was written in,
>though I would suspect PL/M. Disassemblies are good to fix occasional
>problens, and better than nothing, but no substitute for source.
I don't think this would be much good going forward. The idea of a grammar
and a link library for a c pre-processor is better. I would prefer to stay
away from OO and make this vaporware of mine a procedural tool based on the
DRI subset though. By keeping it simple it would have greater chance of
success and by using old procedural stuff it might get some use by old
timers wanting to write Windows and Linux Code.
>If I had real hope I could post on comp.sys.cpm, or whatever the list is.
>If the actual sources still exist they're probably tucked in a box in
>someone's garage or basement, dropping bits onto the floor. Otherwise they
>would probably have surfaced.
It's comp.os.cpm and it's a busy little place:) Also some cpm and therefore
interest on comp.sys.apple2, comp.sys.apple2.programmer and comp.sys.cbm.
The folks on comp.os.cpm in particular would be interested in any Vintage
PL/I and PL/M and other good old stuff from you or Robin or whoever can
scare-up anything at all. I have webspace and would not be adverse to
putting-up a great assortment as do others. As a virtual undertaker I enjoy
such virtual undertakings:)
Bill
Bill Buckels
"Peter Flass" <Peter...@Yahoo.com> wrote:
>The same people that own the rights to C, i.e. no one. The Multics PL/I
>compiler, written in PL/I, is open source if anyone wants to play with it.
>PL/I(F) is too, but it's in ancient assembler. It's too bad the source for
>PL/I-86 hasn't yet turned up.
Good thoughts but since nobody owns the rights to either C or PL/I and since
C is pretty much guaranteed to be available wherever PL/I isn't as well as
where it is the C route is a good route as long as the features aren't too
ambitious in which case it will never get done.
Bill
Tom Linden
> robin" <rob...@bigpond.com> wrote Re: Fetch a routine from a specific
> DD:
>
>> It's not "mistakenly" written. That was one of the original
>> accomplishments
>> of PL/I, and still applies.
>
> Thanks for clearing that up. Some other respondents to that thread
> indicated
> that assembly language would be required. So I guess they may be mistaken
> and you are correct?
>
>> The reason? PL/I is rich in features and in data types. As well, many
>> of
>> the things designed in PL/I were far in advance of the time, so the
>> features have been there that were lacking in other
> languages.
>
> I do appreciate 3GL like Clarion 2 as I said. Pity the common man can't
> afford a compiler!
>
>> Why do you think that professional software should be given to you free?
>
> Current copies of language products should be free for evaluation and
> personal use. It is a buyer's market. It is a belief rather than a
> thought
> unless you say otherwise, then you will probably be correct again as
> well:)
We offer a free PL/I compiler for OpenVMS if you qualify as a hobbyist,
i.e.,
non-commercial. Now it has an option to generate Java classes from PL/I
dcls
>
>> Peter Flass's site is undergoing some change. When it is finished, the
>> link will become valid again.
>
> He told me something different. Again you may be right:)
>
> Bill
>
>
>
>
--
PL/I for OpenVMS
www.kednos.com
Richard Brady
Norm Alcott, President of Discus Distribution Services, on March 2, 2002
in comp.os.cpm newsgroup offered 80 eight inch disks of CP/M software
for the cost of shipping. In his message he wrote that many of them
were source code. IIRC, he was the gentleman who said he had source
code to the DRI PL/I compiler. The only newsgroup reply didn't claim disks.
That might also have been source code to the DOS version of the compiler.
Richard Brady