From: peeling%hermes.mod.uk@relay.mod.uk
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Information about ANDF / TDF
Keywords: UNCOL
Date: 28 Sep 92 12:30:00 GMT
Article-I.D.: comp.92-09-195
Reply-To: peeling%hermes.mod.uk@relay.mod.uk
Organization: Compilers Central

My name and email address was put into comp.compilers by Nick Haines as a
source of info about TDF. 

I have received numerous enquiries and we will be sending information to
all these as soon as possible, but there will be a slight delay ...  TDF
has just been updated to a state from which in future it will only be
modified in a strictly upwards compatible manner. We will delay sending
out information until the new specification is ready in machine-readable
form (approximately six weeks time). 

We are also revamping all our documentation to make it clear exactly what
claims we make for TDF and to provide plenty of details / examples to back
up these claims. The new documentation set is likely to be ready by end
November - I will put out an email when they are ready so all those
interested can request them.

An update on some details in Nick's original mail:

ANDF is no longer a subset of TDF. The current version of TDF is in sync
with OSF's ANDF which is also the version that USL will be working on with
SVR4.2. The latest version of TDF handles C as described in our "Facts and
Figures" and should have a good stab at handling C++, Pascal, Fortran 77
and 90, and Ada. Cobol will need a BCD library. It may be suitable for
Lisp (no guesses as to performance). 

We are no longer working on a C++ producer or the separate TDF-to-TDF
optimiser - we are concentrating on robustness / performance / support for
APIs (we already support ANSI C, Posix and XPG3 and will be working on
SVR4.2, OSF AES and Win 32). 

The "Facts and Figures" quoted by Nick are well out of date. With the
exception of the VAX (currently frozen) all installers are now
significantly faster.

As suggested by Nick there are producers being produced by collaborators -
mainly in a $14M Esprit project called GLUE (sic).  Languages include -
Fortran 77, Ada, C++ and a Lisp-family language.  Outside GLUE we have a
contractor (NAG at Oxford) looking at Fortran 90 and will soon have a
contractor looking at Ada 9x. 

We are happy to supply documents to anyone - just send to:

peeling%hermes.mod.uk@relay.mod.uk

Software availability is currently through the OSF snapshot programme; for
further details email Andy Johnson at the OSF Research Institute at 1
Cambridge Center, Cambridge MA on 

andyj@osf.org

We are looking into the possibility of doing an evaluation / research
distribution of the TDF software. This software would be covered by a
non-disclosure agreement that limits use solely to evaluation / research.
If you might be interested in such a research / evaluation distribution
could you please let me know - it will help us decide if there is enough
demand to warrant the effort of setting up such a distribution. If we do
decide to make a research distribution available I will post a message to
comp.compilers. 

Nic Peeling
TDF Project Manager
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