From: chard@borland.com (Richard Nelson)
Subject: Re: BP7--colorized source code....
Originator: chard@genghis.borland.com
Organization: Borland International
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 23:59:16 GMT

>*  I chose different colors for each category, just to see how it worked. 
>I noticed that STRING showed up in the reserved word color, but INTEGER,
>WORD, LONGINT, and CHAR did not.  Is this a bug, or do I just not
>understand what is happening?

As Mr. Murdoch pointed out already, "string" has two possible
meanings, one as a reserved word, and one as a standard type.  The
compiler can tell the difference in context, but the syntax
highlighter can't.  It highlights it because it's a reserved word.

>*  When I tried to use DPMIINST, it ran fine.  It even told me to send a
>copy of f9b18c13.db to Borland so that it could be included in the next
>release.  (Am I unique in this, or did everyone get that?!?)  Anyway, I
>can boot up BP, and get a screen, use some of the FKEYS, read in a
>program, etc, but when I try to use the menu bar, it hangs.  The only
>keystroke sequence that continues to work is Alt-X (fortunately).  It is
>no different when I use the keyboard or mouse.  I get the pull-down menu,
>and nothing else.  Am I missing something here?  I am using DR-DOS v6.0,
>4meg of RAM, 386SX/25.  I can run BPW just fine.  Bye the way, I did set
>up my CONFIG.SYS so that it conformed to the requirements stated in the
>installation instructions.

The only thing that strikes me is that perhaps your mouse driver is
not behaving politely in a protected-mode environment, but that's just
a guess.  You'd have to call Borland Tech Support for a more
definitive answer.

>*  The new compiler, touted as compiling 85,000 lines per minute, seems to
>be no faster than my TP6 compiler.  I compiled all of my last three
>commercial software packages just before installing BP7, timing each, and
>then re-compiled them all right after (with TURBO).  The difference was
>less than a second, if at all, on my largest source file (6800 lines,
>including comments).  Is the TURBO.EXE compilation engine the same?

It's not the same compiler, but there weren't any really significant
changes in the speed of the parsing and compilation.  I think the
compiler guys guesstimated that they'd tweaked about a half a percent
increase from a change in the parser, but the 85,000 lines per minute
is the same speed claimed for TP6.

>*  I have seen two things that seem to contridict each other.  First, the
>new TV documentation discusses some differences in the physical
>size/format of the TObject, etc.  A couple of places in the documentation
>also state that BP7 is backward compatible.  Which is supposed to be
>right?  I can tell you that I had to recompile ALL of the UNITS from TP6
>before they worked with my BP7 programs, so I have a feeling that I know
>the answer already.

As always, compiled code from previous versions of the compiler can't
be linked in.  You need to recompile your units with the latest
version of the compiler.  BP7 *is* backward compatible at the source
code level.  Also, you can read streams created with version 6.0 using
version 7.0; the objects that differ in the newer Turbo Vision know
how to adjust older versions.
-- 
=========================================================================
 Richard Nelson, Borland Int'l | chard@borland.com | Go Bears! Grrr-rah!
  Had this been Borland's opinion, I would have written it in a manual.
 "...there's no hurry, I'm just sittin' here doing time." - John Lennon