The Amos Pro Compiler, available ONLY from F1

Compiler
The Amos Pro Compiler is a special release for F1. As I am personally heavily involved in the Amos scene I felt the need to 'do my bit' as it were to try and help keep Amos alive (and make a few bob of course!) Anyway, from my dealings with Amos friends/contacts/customers it was very clear that a lot of people wanted the Pro Compiler but couldn't buy it for love or money, the same is now true of the full Amos Pro package.

So I approached Europress with the Licenceware idea, we would pay them a handsome share for every copy of the compiler sold. To keep costs down F1 would produce the complete package on premises. It was a long shot, and to be honest I was very shocked when Europress came back to haggle.

So we have the rights to sell our version of the compiler. We have signed a contract that lasts nine months, but it is renewable. The package consists of the exact same three floppy disks as in the V2 release of the compiler, the manual is very similar to the original, though not so glossy and there is no pretty box, just a nice dust jacket to protect your package. Disk 1 contains the Compiler itself and an installer. Strangley, the installer is in Amos source form and you have to load it into your Amos editor and run it. This installs the compiler in your Amos Pro drawer and allows you to access the Compiler from within AmosPro itself, very handy. You don't have to do that of course you can just run disk 1 on its own and compile any Amos source written in any version of Amos.
Disk 2 contains some extras such as example programs and some useful odds and sods. Disk 3 has got a few people excited, it upgrades Amos Pro to the latest version (V2.0) To be able to install the compiler for use WITHIN AmosPro you have to be using AmosPro V2, the last ever update to Pro (sob!)


IMPORTANT:
If you own the Amiga Format cover disk version of Amos Pro the updater will *NOT* upgrade it! Come on, you can't expect free updates to a commercial program that you were given for free, can you?

The Compilers front end is very simple to use and is explained fully in the manual, you don't really need the manual to be honest.
front-end
Some of the benefits of installing the Compiler are some new Amos Pro commands, such as PowerPacker support and others. The pro Compiler takes your Amos source code and compiles it into an executable stand-alone program that is usually a lot faster than the source code, dependent on the type of program. The executable turns out quite a bit bigger than the original source code obviously (depending on wether you include the Amos.Library inside the executable or not) Executables are best crunched with the latest version of PowerPacker (commercial project) or CrunchMania (PD/Shareware) which is a brilliant util and has many applications for Amos coders such as the ability to crunch/uncrunch executable AND data files transparently (DMC GOLD uses this trick)

Amos and and the compiler have always had bugs and there is nothing we can do about the Compiler I am afraid, a few of the well know bugs are:

*Don't compile a program with an Icon bank inside it, load in the Icon bank from inside your program when it is run otherwise it will crash.

*Don't use the 'Squash' function in the Compiler, as the executable will not run on some Amiga's.

Er, I have forgotten the others, will update this list sooner or later. Still, 14.99 for a product that would otherwise be unobtainable and originally cost 35.00 can't be bad.


F1 Software are the ONLY OFFICIAL DISTRIBUTOR of the AMOS PRO COMPILER

Just send a cheque/P.o made out to F1 licenceware for 14.99UKP +(75p postage UK) (�1.00 Europe) (�1.50 ROW) or use your credit card. You can also place your order on-line


F1 HOME PAGE | F1 AMOS PAGE | F1 TITLES