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NOTICE.TXT
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NOTICE.TXT 3-OCT-2001
DISTRIBUTION POLICY AND LAST MINUTE NOTES
Apex was ported from the Apple II computer to the Amiga in 1985. The
Amiga version is incomplete and has many known bugs, but it runs
sufficiently well so that programmers who are familiar with it can
develop programs in 68000 assembly language and XPL0. Its primary appeal
is that it runs very fast compared to the Apple II.
Apex has seen little use since 1990. (It even has a Y2K bug!) It is made
available here primarily for historical and educational purposes.
Please ignore any references to "Computer Applications." It is no longer
in business.
DISTRIBUTION POLICY
Apex and its related software are free; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as
published by the Free Software Foundation.
This code is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for
more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program (in the file LICENSE.DOC); if not, write to the Free
Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
IF YOU'RE CONFUSED
If you are hopelessly confused, you are perfectly normal.
This version of Apex is not for you unless you are a programmer. For the
assembly language programmer it provides an assembler that does only
exactly what you tell it to: no automatic optimizations, no automatic PC-
relative address modes. In fact, if you want, you can write self-modify-
ing, position-dependent code. For the programmer who wants a higher
language it provides XPL, a language with a syntax similar to Pascal and
the power of C. Apex provides an efficient programming environment which
compares very favorably to the most super-charged, turbo-warp systems
available (by 1980's standards).
Admittedly, the documentation is sketchy. The XPL Manual is not included
on this disk. Perhaps whoever gave you this disk will also give you some
help. Start by reading the tutorial, TUTORIAL.DOC. If you don't have the
booklet, you can use the LIST command:
APX>LIST 0:TUTORIAL.DOC<RETURN>
(You can't get a good printout of this document because it contains
special control characters which are only meaningful to a program called
ITOPNT.)
RAM DISKS
Much of Apex's speed is dependant upon the use of RAM disks which are not
documented in the tutorial because of an unusual problem. The tutorial
refers to the floppy disks, units 0 and 1, but Apex is normally run using
the RAM disks, units 2 and 3, with the system on unit 2. Unfortunately,
due the Amiga 1000 hardware, unit 2 is write protected. This means that
while running the system from unit 2, you cannot set the date (DATE),
change the defaults (DF) or save a memory image (SAVE). This can be
gotten around by temporarily transferring the system to unit 0 (SY 0). To
copy a new date or default to the system RAM disk, you must reboot.
XPL PROBLEMS
There are a few problems with porting XPL programs into the Amiga. The
biggest being that floating point is not yet working. Also there are a
number of missing intrinsics such as TRAP and GETERR, which prevent
utilities like SCAN and ALLDIR from being ported. The graphics intrinsics
have been changed substantially to support the substantially different
hardware. Finally, the language itself has changed in a number of small
ways to take advantage of the 68000. (These changes are documented in
XPL68K.DOC.)
Loren
loren_blaney@idcomm.com