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Text File | 1995-07-02 | 22.4 KB | 524 lines

╓─────┐ ╓─┐ ╓─┐ ╥──┐ ╓─╥─┐ ╥─┐ ╥ ╥──┐ ╥──┐ ║ │ ╙─┐ ╙─┐ ╟─ ║ ║ │ ╟─┴┐ ║ ╟─ ╟─┬┘ ╟─────┤ ╙──┘ ╙──┘ ╨──┘ ╨ ╨ ┴ ╨──┘ ╨──┘ ╨──┘ ╨ ┴ ║ │ ╥ ╓──┐ ╥─┐ ╓──┐ ╥──┐ ╓──┐ ╓─╥─┐ ╓──┐ ╥──┐ ╥ ┬ ╨ ┴ ║ ╟──┤ ╟─┴┐ ║ │ ╟─┬┘ ╟──┤ ║ ║ │ ╟─┬┘ ╙──┤ ║ ╨ ┴ ╨──┘ ╙──┘ ╨ ┴ ╨ ┴ ╨ ╙──┘ ╨ ┴ ╙──┘ ║ (c) 1994,1995 Kurt Inge Groenbech ╨─────┘ ───────────────────────────────┤ Version 1.0 ├───────────────────────────────── R E F E R E N C E M A N U A L ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Table of contents: 0 - Legal 0.1 - Disclaimer 0.2 - Registration (and what you get) 0.3 - Distribution 0.4 - Acknowledgements 1 - Introduction 1.1 - About this reference manual 1.2 - Why starting this project 1.3 - Release notes!! 2 - Installation 3 - Command line switches 4 - Features 4.1 - Procedure/macro Worksheet 4.2 - Heuristic Scan 4.3 - Block comment/uncomment 4.4 - Label Jumps 4.5 - Opcode help 4.6 - Tab characters 4.7 - Redefining shortcut keys in menus 5 - Project Manager 5.1 - What is it? 5.2 - Creating a project file 5.3 - Making a project 6 - Known bugs 6.1 Alab hangs when I open a window! 7 - People involved 7.1 - Public domain software 7.2 - Betatesters 8 - The author/contacting ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── [ 0 - Legal ] ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ 0.1 - Disclaimer ---------------- Assembler Laboratory is provided "as is" and without any warranty. To the extent premitted under applicable law, I disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including but not limited to, any implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Specifically, I make no representation or warranty that the software is fit for any particular purpose. I shall not be liable for any damages resulting from the use of this software, including but not limited to, loss of profit, data or use of the software, or indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages or other similar claims, even if I has been specifically advised of the possibility of such damages. What it means: The only thing I guarantee Alab will do, is to take up space on your harddisk. If it doesn't do that, well... then I think you have some serious problems with your harddisk ;) 0.2 - Registration ------------------ Assembler Laboratory is provided as SHAREWARE (read SHAREWRE.TXT for information about shareware). If you continue using Alab after a 30 day trial period, you MUST PURCHASE a license for it. This is the advantage about shareware. You can use the program for a specified number of days/months to see if you like it, and then pay for it if you do and would like to use it further. The non-commercial registration fee for Alab is set to just $15 (USD). This includes shipping costs, disk, envelope, stamp etc. To register Alab, do the following: - Print out the order form (ORDER.FRM) and fill it out. - Print out license.txt (read it ofcoz) and sign it - Mail them both to HAAVARD ENGUM (the address is at the end of this document, and in order.frm). - The registration fee can be paid in cash, cheque or money-transfer to "giro" bank or postgiro accounts: Bank account ("giro" bank) : 82306010944 Post account (postgiro) : 08250698330 Make it payable to : Groenbech Sigrid Johansens v.23 7025 Trondheim NORWAY When Haavard then recieves order.frm and a signed license.txt (and you have paid the fee), he will send a registered version to you by snailmail. The shareware version of Alab comes with lack of 2 features. I have not put any shitty delays or big screens wich says 'EVALUATION COPY' in there, because that SUCKS! I *hate* such delays. I do not want to push you too much to register Alab. Those who find it useful, I hope you will appreciate my many hours of work on this project and register. What you get by registering: - A personalised disk with a registered version of Alab. - Max 15 windows open (4 in the shareware version) - Possibility to Save/Restore desktop when not using Project. I couldn't figure out something else ;) 0.3 - Distribution ------------------ Distribution of Alab must happen under these conditions: - Alab should be distributed in its original archive, but if not possible, all these files must be in the archive: ALAB.EXE ALAB.OVR ALAB.DOC ALAB.CFG ALAB.HLP ALAB.REV ALAB.MAC KEYS.MAC FILE_ID.DIZ ORDER.FRM LICENSE.TXT [UNHANG.COM] not a must, but do include it if you have it [SHAREWRE.TXT] not a must, but do include it if you have it [DESCRIPT.ION] not a must, but do include it if you have it - No money can be charged for it, EXCEPT a little payment for the disk or similar. 0.4 - Acknowledgements ---------------------- Many hours have gone into the development of this product, and I have got many a useful idéa from various betatesters. Especially I would like to thank the following people for extensive betatesting: - Tor-Helge Skei (Axon/ Xenon), Main betatester - Helge Helgesen - Espen Grimsgaard (Twinny/ Gollum) - Thomas Loevlie A complete list of betatesters comes at the end of this document. Also, I acknowledge these packages in the development of Alab: Turbo Vision for Turbo Pascal 6.0 (yes 6.0!), by Borland International Turbo Vision for Borland Pascal 7.0 by Borland International Turbo Assembler by Borland International Turbo Link by Borland International Turbo Debugger by Borland International Turbo Profiler by Borland International Microsoft Macro Assembler by Microsoft Corp Microsoft Overlay Linker by Microsoft Corp Microsoft Codeview by Microsoft Corp [ 1 - Introduction ] ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ 1.1 - About this reference manual --------------------------------- This documentation is inteded as a short overview of Alab and I will therefore not go too much into details, thus I recon most of you out there know how to handle an IDE (I believe most of you have already tried different IDE's). 2 statements before I continue... - Please bear with my english (I'm from Norway!:) - I will cut the crap about Turbo Vision, how an Assembler IDE editor should be compared to a Pascal IDE editor, and so forth. I will instead consentrate on talking about all the special features, and other things I believe can be useful to know when starting using Alab. - This program is called Assembler Laboratory, but in this document it will be called Alab for ease. (AsmLab in the startup ansi ...) 1.2 - Why starting this project ------------------------------- For some years of assembly programming, I (as most of us) had this cyclus during development: ┌┌─> - Edit the source code in a regular editor ││ - Save the source code (an extra keypress) ││ - Exit the editor ││ - Assemble the source code from the command line │└─ - Go back to the editor if reported errors │ (you'd have to search for the error(s)) │ - Link the .obj-file (possibly run an .bat-file or MAKE instead of │ assemble/link) │ - Run the executable program │ - Boot machine if the program hangs └── - Go back to the editor to make further modifications This is an extremely unneccesery time consuming process, and the idéa popped into my mind: 'Why not make an Asm IDE (I hadn't seen anyone at that time) where you can do all of this things without exiting the IDE!' I had also seen the editors for Pascal/C which had syntax highlighting, and I thought that that would be a great idéa to have in the Asm IDE. C also had a great error highlighting and why not also include that in my Asm IDE? Ok, so the idéa was born, and now I needed a name for it. I for a long time had 'AsmIDE' as the name, but then suddenly I saw that there already was an Asm IDE out there called AsmIDE (hi Toby!). Ok, I had already come so far on the project so I didn't want to cancel it. All I had to do was to make an IDE much better than what is already out there. I ofcourse had to change the name. At first I couldn't think of anything good, but I guess suddenly 'Assembler Laboratory' must have just popped in (can't remember exactly). Since it is called 'Laboratory' I also thought I had to make a bunch of extra features (laboratory is a place where you have many different things at your disposal), and so it was! Here is a brief list of Assembler Laboratory features: - [Save/]Assemble as standalone choice (one keypress) - [Save/]Assemble[/Link] as standalone choice (one keypress) - [Save/]Assemble/Link/Run as standalone choice (one keypress) - Syntax highlighting - Error hightlighting - Procedure worksheet (useful popup overview of procedures) - Macro/data Worksheet (same as proc worksheet, but for macros/data) - Heuristic scan (scans through source code for coding bugs) - Project Manager - Label jumps - Keyboard macros - Menu functions shortcut key reassignment - Online opcode help. Also context sensitive. (Topic Search) - Block comment/uncomment - Ascii/scancodes table - Dec/Hex/Bin calculator (inspired by Toby's AsmIDE, as many other things :) ... and I have also included an 'unhang' utility ('Unhang.com') which can prevent your machine from hanging in many cases (that is, you can press the stated keycombination when your machine hangs, and Unhang will try to quit back to DOS.) Beware that this program can be very unstable I think. It will not work if you either hook int 09 or disables keyboard interrupt. It will probably not work if you run some module player in the background... What it does is to hook int 9 and saves an exit-command at the address found on the stack (the point where the interrupt was called). Just 'mov ax, 4c00h - int 21h', but it works on most smaller programmes ! :) It is actually _very_ useful when coding demos under dos for example (without sound in the background). 1.3 - Release notes!! --------------------- I have been assigned to the military service this year starting 19. Juli 1995. Due to this I have decided to release Alab much sooner than I had expected, or else I probably must have waited one year. Because of this, Alab will be much more unfinished than I had expected and has a lack of features I wanted to put in there. I will also not be available to fix bugs most of the time, which garanteed will occur during this year, but there will be ways to pass your messages/idéas/suggestions to Xenon members or Espen Grimsgaard (twinny / gollum) who is the coordinator of the WWW page (is at the end of this doc). Another thing about this release version is that it contains a lot of uneccessary code (the .exe-file is over 230k!). I have not had any time to code it better before I leave... If there is overwhelming response, I will code as _hell_ when I have absens of leave (I don't know what the hell it's called, what I mean is: free from military service). I will put in features you have requested, fix bugs, change things etc., and try to release a new version now and then, in between military service. [ 2 - Installation ] ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ - Copy all the files to the directory where you wish to have Alab - Include the directory in your path if you want (also easiest to do in your autoexec.bat) Now Alab is ready to go. The first thing you should do when you start Alab, is to go to the Options|Directories and set the path to where your Tasm/Masm executables are. [ 4 - Features ] ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ 4.1 - Procedure/macro Worksheet ------------------------------- Procedure/macro Worksheet is a completely new feature in low level programming IDE's. It is a popup menu with complete procedure overview. Here you have a nice list of all the procedures in the current source code, and by pressing [Space], you jump directly to the item the bar is on! Well, you maybe are familar with something like this. Borland Pascal have a browser which is quite similar to this. 4.2 - Heuristic Scan -------------------- I actually got this idéa from the famous virus-scanner F-PROT. What Heuristic Scan does, is to scan through the sourcecode and look for bugs which wasn't reported by the compiler, and is likely to cause some problems. F.ex. it scans for missing 'ret's in procedures (which is likely to hang your program). This is the only thing in Heuristic Scan so far, but I have some more idéas to it, and I will most probably get many idéas from you betatesters. (F.ex. I have planned to make Heuristic Scan scan for places where it is possible that DS doesn't point to the data-segment (or the segment where the variable is) when accessing variables (this is also in many cases a hang-cause). 4.3 - Block comment/uncomment ----------------------------- This feature is pretty much self-explanatory. You mark a block, and choose Block comment from the menu or shortcut-keys, and ....! The block is commented. I guess uncomment is obvious at this time :) 4.4 - Label Jumps ----------------- This is a nice one! You just position the cursor on a line that holds a CALL or Jxx (all jump opcodes), and press Ctrl+J. The cursor then jumps to the procedure or label succeding the opcode. 4.5 - Online Opcode Help ------------------------ Also a nice one! On the Help|Opcodes you have a very extensive online help on the instruction set. Just choose one and there you have it all, just as detailed as any TSR. There also is context sensitive help on this. Position the cursor on a line which hold an opcode as the first thing (or after a label), and press the command for Topic Search (Shift+F1 as default). Help for that specific opcode is automatically brought up. 4.6 - Tab characters -------------------- I do not use true tab characters in my source codes, and therefore I have not bothered to put in support for smart tabs when the 'Use tab characters' checkbox is checked in Options|Editor (i'm too lazy, and besides I have very little time to finish Alab now). That is; smart tabs is only available when using spaces instead of true tab characters. Also; the tab step when using true tab characters is always 8, no matter what you type in the 'Tab size' box in Options|Editor. 4.7 - Redefining shortcut keys in menus --------------------------------------- Actually very easy. Just follow the instructions in KEYS.MAC. The reason why I mention it here, is because people seem to not notice that it says you have to start Alab with the '/K' switch in order to make the changes take effect! Remember that... Also, you must not reorder the function names in any way! Alab does not recognais (I know it isn't written like that!) the function names. [ 5 - Project Manager ] ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ 5.1 - What is it? ----------------- Project Manager lets you create and maintain a project file (extension .APF for Alab Project File) where you specify all the .asm, .obj and .lib files which are to be included in your program. If you specify an .asm file in your project YOU DO NOT HAVE TO specify the .obj file created from that .asm file! With Project Manager it gets easy to maintain your program, and easy to link/run it. 5.2 - Creating a project file ----------------------------- Lets say you are starting on a program with 3-4 source files, 2 additional object files you have got from a friend with video routines etc., and 1 of your own library files. You then first choose Open on the Project menu and type in the name for the project file (the name of the project file will be used to create an .exe/.com file). You then get an open Project Manager window with no files in it. Press Insert or choose Add Item from the menu to insert new items. Insert the 3-4 source files, the 2 object files and the library file. Then you can go to one of the source file and press ENTER to open it (or choose Open from the File menu). You then write your source code in it and assembles it the usual way. You do this with the other .asm files also. 5.3 - Making a project ---------------------- When you choose Make and you have an open project, the Project Manager goes through the files specified in the project file (project window), top to bottom, and do this: If the file is a source file (.asm) the Project Manager checks wether the source file is modified. If it is, the file is assembled and the .obj file created is added to the parameters which will be passed to the linker later. If the file is a .obj or a .lib file, the file is added to the parameters to pass to the linker. Then when the Project Manger has gone through all the files, the linker is invoked and an executable is created. The name of the executable will be the same as the name of the project file. [ 6 - Known bugs ] ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ - Not actually a bug, but lots of useless code in there! (and code which is never used too..) - Syntax highlighting really is way to slow...! - Not fully support for Masm. Not support for Microsoft Link yet. - Also not support for Masm in project. - Calculator don't handle negativ decimal->hex+some more bugs (don't use too big numbers...) - Project Manager: You have to specify full path to include files in the source files in most cases. - The line is deleted if you press 'Shift+End,Right' (use Undo) - Some bugs with highlight extensions - Dos screen doesn't work on a monochrom screen (who has that anyway?) - Some other small bugs which I cannot remember right now. 6.1 - Alab hangs when I open a window! -------------------------------------- The cause for this is most probably that you don't have a 386+, and that the syntax highlighting checkbox is checked in Options|Editor. What happens is that syntax highlighting uses 386 code, and this will hang your machine. You will have to turn off syntax highlighting and clear the 'Highlight extensions' field in Options|Editor before you open any windows. [ 7 - People Involved ] ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ 7.1 - Public domain software ---------------------------- - Exec procedure with EMS swap by Thomas Wagner 7.2 - Betatesters ----------------- Here is a complete list of betatesters: - Tor-Helge Skei (Axon/ Xenon), Main betatester - Helge Helgesen - Espen Grimsgaard (Twinny/ Gollum) - Haavard Engum (Hobbes/ Xenon) - Knut Petter Svendsen (Mephisto/ Xenon) - Staale Singstad (Cyberman/ Xenon) - Michal Karpinski (Mike X/ Xenon) - Kurt-Inge Johansen - Thomas Loevlie - Kristian Loeseth (Opossum/ ) [ 8 - The author/contacting ] ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ I'm 19 years old and live in Trondheim, Norway. Student at Trondheim School of Engineering. A.k.a. Ghoul / Xenon Development If you have suggestions/questions/problems about Alab I cannot be reached due to military service, as stated above :( What you should do, is send your requests to one of the addresses below: (Most preferred method is to send it to Haavard in one way or the other, most preferably email, and the WWW page) Email : hobbes@infolink.no This is the email address to Haavard Engum, a.k.a. Hobbes/Xenon Development. He will make sure I get all the requests in time. WWW : http://www.nano.no/~espeng/alab/ The coordinator of this page is Espen Grimsgaard, a.k.a. twinny/gollum, and there you can find info about Alab and you can send your suggestions/questions/problems there, and he'll save them for me. BBS : Bogus Boutique #1 +47-73964483 (Xenon Development WHQ) [BBBS] Bogus Boutique #2 +47-73965209 Eldritch BBS +47-72582079 (23:00-07:00) InfoLink BBS +47-22571600/22571604 (10 nodes) [MBBS] NB! Bogus Boutique is likely to go down soon... Norwegians: Det er en konferanse på nettet NDC (Norwegian Demo Connection) som heter NDC.Alab. Dere kan poste alt om alab der til Haavard Engum. Han kan også svare på en del sp¢rsmål dere måtte ha. (dere kan poste meldingene public også, så kan f.eks. forslagene til nye ting diskuteres e.l.) You can always mail me at my home address, but it's nok likely I'll get your letter until 1-2 months. Snailmail: Author: 'Registration coordinator' Kurt Inge Groenbech Haavard Engum Sigrid Johansens veg 23 Stokkanhaugen 164 7025 Trondheim 7048 Trondheim NORWAY NORWAY NB! Please (again) register if you like it! I have been kind not to put some shitty delays, shareware reminders or whatever in there (but some restrictions like the 4 window limit), and I would very much appreciate if you show your interest, so I can continue developing this program. (hrmpf... god, what a sentence ;) Last minute notes: I know there's a lot of bad programming in there now. Ofcourse I would have rewritten big parts of it, but I have no time because of reasons in section 1.3. Well, hope you like it (sorry for the 64Kb limit;) ! Yrs, φ Kurt Inge Groenbech φ