Announcing Inform 6.02
Graham Nelson
Second release of Inform 6
==========================
A "beta release" of Inform 6 was made only last week, but here is another one.
This is still very much a test release, and I intend to make such updates
frequently if necessary to minimise the extent to which the porters duplicate
each other's work. The source code of v6.02 is slightly cleaner than that of
v6.01 (now that many strict C compilers have attempted to compile it and
have reported their objections), and several bugs in v6.01 itself have been
removed, at least one quite serious. In addition, error reporting is
better, responding to the most frequent complaint so far.
The full list of changes is given below.
The files which make up this release are all now at the
incoming/if-archive
directory at ftp.gmd.de, pending proper archiving. The library 6/1 is not
being updated, only the source code to Inform and its technical manual
(and that only slightly). Specifically, there is a tar archive:
inform602_source.tar
containing the 21 files
arrays asm bpatch directs errors expressc
expressp files inform lexer linker memory
objects states symbols syntax tables text
veneer verbs header
plus a file called "README" containing the text of this post.
Of these, "header" is an include file and should probably be unpacked as
a file called "header.h"; the rest should probably be unpacked as
"whatever.c".
and a slightly modified (mostly to contain the modification history below)
Technical Manual file
inform602_technical_manual.txt [in plain ASCII text; including
instructions on how to port the code]
In addition, in my other capacity as the Acorn RISC OS porter of Inform, I've
made fresh versions of:
inform602_riscos_port.spk [the Acorn RISC OS port of Inform 6, set
up and ready for use, including the
library; this needs only an interpreter
to be provided.
The file is a SparkFS archive, readable
with the public-domain utility SparkPlug.]
inform602_riscos_source.spk [an Acorn SparkFS archive of the source]
Better luck this time!
Graham Nelson
May 5th 1996
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
List of changes since v6.01
Features added:
"Declared but not used" and "no such constant" errors now reported on the
line of occurrence, not at end of source.
Error message added for local variable being defined twice for the same
routine
Bugs fixed:
"Segmentation fault" (i.e., writing memory out of range) fixed to do with
symbol flags being set wrongly
Constant binary numbers not lexed correctly
"for (p = 0::)" misinterpreted due to "::" being recognised as an operator
Backpatch error under RISC OS (and possibly elsewhere) when linker used
Grammar token routines reported as "declared but not used"
Grammar token routines not working at run time
"ofclass" failing to recognised inherited class membership
Inheritance of negated attributes not working
"children" function giving the wrong answer (specifically, always giving the
object number of the first child); this had the knock-on effect of
making the "tree" debugging verb produce incorrect output
Source code cleaning:
Header file rearranged to typedef int32 in the right place, and tidied
up a little; ICL_Directory defined rather than left to cause an error
when Inform is compiled; INFORM_FILE replaced with MAIN_INFORM_FILE
in some of the OS definition blocks; SEEK_SET defined rather than left
to the vagaries of ANSI
Type clashes between int and int32 reconciled for:
assemble_label_no, routine_starts_line, read_byte_from_memory_block,
write_byte_to_memory_block, parse_label, symbol_index
Return value for hash_code_from_string cast explicitly to int (rather than
implicitly from unsigned int)
prec_table given type int
Many "dead assignments" (redundant settings of variables) removed
"=-" replaced by "= -" to prevent pre-ANSI compilers from misunderstanding
"x=-1" as "x=x-1"
The veneer string for the source of "CA__Pr" has been contracted to make
it smaller than 2048 chars long, since Microsoft Visual C/C++ won't
compile strings longer than that
symbs[] explicitly cast to char * in a few points in "linker", "objects" and
"symbols"
Format string for process IDs corrected from "_proc%08x" to "_proc%08lx"
Format string for serial number copying removed, and a use of strcpy put
in its place
Many thanks to the following informers:
Torbj|rn Andersson, Evan Day, Stephen van Egmond, Roy Fellows,
David Fletcher, Sam Hulick, Brad Jones, Matt Kimball, Kirk Klobe,
Bonni Mierzejewska, Bob Newell, Miron Schmidt.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert A. Pelak
I've uploaded a beta version of Inform 6.02 for the Macintosh to gmd.
It has no interface to speak of; just the input prompting provided by
Inform. I'd encourage Mac Informers to play with it, but don't throw
away Inform 5 yet. Let me know of any difficulties you encounter.
Robert
Robert A. Pelak
In article <4n657u$s...@newsstand.cit.cornell.edu>,
Second verse, same as the first ...
I've done the same with Inform 6.03. Good luck and happty beta
testing.
Jon
lot brighter. (One of those weird things....) Jon