11. What does IP stand for?
IP was never coined to be a particular acronym. Present definitions are Internet Pascal, Intellectual Property Pascal, InterPlatform Pascal. The name IP Pascal was chosen to represent the flavor of today's machine and process independent design processes. As some of you may know, I am heavily involved in the networking industry. Internet Protocol was originally envisioned as a way to "bridge" different networks together. The principle was that one carefully constructed standard would be able to bridge any number of different networks together, and the overhead of a second level protocol would only be incurred once. This is much like saying that designing one standard plug, then designing a series of adapters to that plug from other plug types, can unify incompatible systems.
IP Pascal is definitely designed to do just that
12. Is IP Pascal new?
No. IP Pascal originated in 1980. IP Pascal is used here in electronic integrated circuit CAD programs. IP Pascal was written as a core in assembly language, but the majority of the system rewritten in Pascal by 1985. In 1987, like many other developers, I moved to the IBM-PC and began using off the shelf standard ISO/ANSI compilers. By 1990, I started to have extensive problems with Pascal vendors not keeping up with changing technologies, and foresaw the fallout of many existing vendors from the market.
At that time, I made a decision whether I would stay with my extensive code base in Pascal, or move to a more generally accepted language, most likely C. I decided that I would stay with Pascal, and take back control of our compiler as it was abandoned in 1987. That work was completed in 1995, in time for the advent of Windows 95. Since that year, the platform for IP has been extensively expanded.
13. What is the lifetime of IP Pascal?
Unlike many commercial products, IP Pascal is not designed according to the "hit software" mentality. I use IP Pascal here, I am its first customer. Because of this, I won't be creating phone support for the product. IP Pascal will be supported by email, web site, and usenet forum without charges or restrictions. Emails will be typically answered within 48 hours.
Because this support model does not require hiring large support staffs (and then firing them later as demand decreases), there is no plans to limit or charge for support.
14. Should standard Pascal be used without extentions?
Recently, I have had some folks email me that they are surprised I am supporting advanced extentions for Pascal.
Pascal always had extentions. The original compiler created by Niklaus Wirth had extentions specific to the CDC 6000 series computers. The idea of the standard was never to forbid extentions, but rather that the basic implementation be as standardized across processors and implementations as possible.
In the old days of the mainframe and line printers, there was actually a chance that a program completely coded within the language standard would be all that was needed. Now, with advanced graphics and sound, and advanced devices like video editing, the general portable program is thought by many to be dead. I would say that nothing is further from the truth. We need clean and portable interfaces and programs more than ever. What has changed is that we rely more on library construction and interfaces. Windows, OS X and Linux/X Windows can be thought of as advanced intefaces with somewhat limited portability. Advanced graphics libraries such OpenGL are paving the way to new levels of functionality and portabilty.
15. What are the basic features of Pascal?
Pascal is a structured language, using if-then-else, while, repeat-until, and for-to/downto control structures. It differs primarily from proceeding languages in that data structures were also included, with records (a feature borrowed from COBOL), arrays, files, sets and pointers.
Pascal is also unusual for forging an effective compromise between language simplicity, power, and matching of language structures to underlying machine implementation.
Pascal also has many features for compiler writers. The language is constructed to have a minimum of ambiguity. Pascal, with few exceptions, can be processed "forward" with all of the smaller elements (like constants, types, etc) being defined before they are used. Pascal requires the types and exact sizes of operands to be known before they are operated on, again leading to simplified language processing and efficient output code (although this feature has often been called a problem). For this reason, Pascal still remains a popular language to implement compilers for as part of a compiler science class.
IP was never coined to be a particular acronym. Present definitions are Internet Pascal, Intellectual Property Pascal, InterPlatform Pascal. The name IP Pascal was chosen to represent the flavor of today's machine and process independent design processes. As some of you may know, I am heavily involved in the networking industry. Internet Protocol was originally envisioned as a way to "bridge" different networks together. The principle was that one carefully constructed standard would be able to bridge any number of different networks together, and the overhead of a second level protocol would only be incurred once. This is much like saying that designing one standard plug, then designing a series of adapters to that plug from other plug types, can unify incompatible systems.
IP Pascal is definitely designed to do just that
12. Is IP Pascal new?
No. IP Pascal originated in 1980. IP Pascal is used here in electronic integrated circuit CAD programs. IP Pascal was written as a core in assembly language, but the majority of the system rewritten in Pascal by 1985. In 1987, like many other developers, I moved to the IBM-PC and began using off the shelf standard ISO/ANSI compilers. By 1990, I started to have extensive problems with Pascal vendors not keeping up with changing technologies, and foresaw the fallout of many existing vendors from the market.
At that time, I made a decision whether I would stay with my extensive code base in Pascal, or move to a more generally accepted language, most likely C. I decided that I would stay with Pascal, and take back control of our compiler as it was abandoned in 1987. That work was completed in 1995, in time for the advent of Windows 95. Since that year, the platform for IP has been extensively expanded.
13. What is the lifetime of IP Pascal?
Unlike many commercial products, IP Pascal is not designed according to the "hit software" mentality. I use IP Pascal here, I am its first customer. Because of this, I won't be creating phone support for the product. IP Pascal will be supported by email, web site, and usenet forum without charges or restrictions. Emails will be typically answered within 48 hours.
Because this support model does not require hiring large support staffs (and then firing them later as demand decreases), there is no plans to limit or charge for support.
14. Should standard Pascal be used without extentions?
Recently, I have had some folks email me that they are surprised I am supporting advanced extentions for Pascal.
Pascal always had extentions. The original compiler created by Niklaus Wirth had extentions specific to the CDC 6000 series computers. The idea of the standard was never to forbid extentions, but rather that the basic implementation be as standardized across processors and implementations as possible.
In the old days of the mainframe and line printers, there was actually a chance that a program completely coded within the language standard would be all that was needed. Now, with advanced graphics and sound, and advanced devices like video editing, the general portable program is thought by many to be dead. I would say that nothing is further from the truth. We need clean and portable interfaces and programs more than ever. What has changed is that we rely more on library construction and interfaces. Windows, OS X and Linux/X Windows can be thought of as advanced intefaces with somewhat limited portability. Advanced graphics libraries such OpenGL are paving the way to new levels of functionality and portabilty.
15. What are the basic features of Pascal?
Pascal is a structured language, using if-then-else, while, repeat-until, and for-to/downto control structures. It differs primarily from proceeding languages in that data structures were also included, with records (a feature borrowed from COBOL), arrays, files, sets and pointers.
Pascal is also unusual for forging an effective compromise between language simplicity, power, and matching of language structures to underlying machine implementation.
Pascal also has many features for compiler writers. The language is constructed to have a minimum of ambiguity. Pascal, with few exceptions, can be processed "forward" with all of the smaller elements (like constants, types, etc) being defined before they are used. Pascal requires the types and exact sizes of operands to be known before they are operated on, again leading to simplified language processing and efficient output code (although this feature has often been called a problem). For this reason, Pascal still remains a popular language to implement compilers for as part of a compiler science class.
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