Difference between revisions of "A few notes on running Visual Prolog 5.2 on recent eComStation systems"

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(What is missing)
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====Program updates====
 
====Program updates====
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The PDC company updated the system to version 5.2.1 but the bulk of those updates were MS Windows specific and had little to do with OS/2, DOS or any of the Unices supported. One change in particular is very useful even though it is Windows only is the Unicode support.
  
 
==What is missing==
 
==What is missing==

Revision as of 08:20, 25 November 2014

This is not as much a full article as a series of notes and tips for those setting up the VIP 5.2 development system on a modern OS/2 system. All what follows applies to the full version of VIP 5.2 that has been set up with all the target and library options, your mileage may vary, and note that the free version of VIP 5.2 lacks some of the libraries used and if I remember correctly showed a slightly different installation behaviour.

Installation

The installation throws an error on some eComSation system, I have not been able to track down why. Notably it those cases it does not create a program manager group or modify the config.sys but since VPI actually does not rely on the paths in the config.sys this is not too big a problem, just create program objects on the desktop for VPI.exe and the converter found in the \VIP52\BIN\OS2\ directory.

Note that it sometimes sets up Prolog directory as the directory that you installed from (presumably your CD ROM) rather than the one you installed to, fix this by changing x:\xxx\VIP52\BIN\OS2\setpath.cmd as required.

  • The OS/2 installer does not require a serial number like the Windows installer does


Documentation and examples

The documentation as shipped does not accurately reflect the version of the compiler shipped with the system.

Usage

  • The free version of VIP 5.2 in addition to missing some features adds a "personal use only"/No commercial usage clause to every exe it generates.

Project & file creation

Not mentioned in the manual but in the OS/2 project creation directory window you can create a new sub folder of a given directory by writing it in the sub folder text box and pressing OK, the project will then be created in the new folder. It cannot by design however create sub-folders of that folder.

Program updates

The PDC company updated the system to version 5.2.1 but the bulk of those updates were MS Windows specific and had little to do with OS/2, DOS or any of the Unices supported. One change in particular is very useful even though it is Windows only is the Unicode support.

What is missing

The VIP converter does an excellent job of automatically converting code and resources between OS/2 and windows, however some of the standards have changed since this was originally developed, the HLP windows files have now been depreciated although you can download help.exe's for modern Windows systems from Microsoft. Icon conversions are low resolution/few colours on both systems, which gives them a distinctly 1992-ish look.

For cross compilation to Windows the option to inject a signature into the .exe would be really helpful since modern windows systems bitch about this even though they do run unsigned executables if pressed hard. Although you can use Microsoft's SignTool this is a bit manual and alongside the antiquated help files the only thing that prevents VPI to be used without an SDK on both systems.

Links