TopSpeed Modula-2

Description

A fast Modula 2 development system for 16 bit OS/2, Windows and DOS code, can be run natively or by cross compiling from DOS. System now owned by Soft Velocity who use it as a utility development system for their Clarion database product and an OS/2 compatible product is no longer being offered. Originally developed by a team headed by Niels Jensen at Borland where it was intended to be a replacement for Turbo Pascal and to provide a back end for the forthcoming Borland C++ package. When the board of Borland decided to buy in a C compiler and continue with the TP product for branding reasons despite the downsides of the existing code, Niels and the British development team behind Borland Modula 2 bought the rights to the code from Borland and left to found Jensen & Partners International.

While there never was a 32bit version of the TopSpeed package for OS/2, the compiler is still used for development of command line interface programs for eCS. This is due to both the quality of the compiler output in particular and in general the quality of the supplied tools but also since the OS/2 CLI is still only 16 bit so for smaller command line programs the advantages of 32 bit tools are limited.

Please note that the last version shipped still had a couple of bugs in the thread library, so care needs to be taken when developing multi-threaded programs.

The TopSpeed development environment

One unusual aspect of the TopSpeed system was that you could buy variants of the development system for C, C++ and Pascal in addition to the Modula 2 compiler and they all shared a back end. Not only could you call C, C++ or Pascal code from the Modula compiler ( and vise versa) but you could mix and match the languages in one source file without resorting to any containers. An unique feature in its time and only one or two other development systems have offered similar features since. After Clarion took over the sales of the TopSpeed system the Clarion 4GL database language was ported to the TopSpeed system (and remains based on it to this day) and became one of the interchangeable front ends.

Another unusual and somewhat unique aspect of the system was its ability to make multi-threaded code and dynamic libraries (DLL's) for DOS. The TopSpeed systems was developed under OS/2 v1.x and the developers were so taken with the threading model that they duplicated it for the DOS environment giving you not only the obvious benefit of being able to make multi-threaded DOS applications but also the option of making portable multi-threaded apps since the TS version for doses copied the OS/2 version down to a tee.

Version

• 3.10

Prerequisites

• For Windows 3.x or Win-OS/2 programming the Microsoft Techkit is required, but the tools from it integrate into the TopSpeed environment.
• Although you can develop OS/2 Presentation Manager applications without the OS/2 SDK, it is highly recommended that you use it since the PM support of TopSpeed Modula-2 is rather weak in the parts were tools from the SDK already existed.

License

• Commercial - Discontinued

Author

• Jensen & Partners International
• Niels Jensen

OS/2 32 bit compilers that offered TopSpeed compatibility libraries and API´s

• XDS-x86 Modula 2
• Canterbury Modula 2 & Oberon-2

Publications

Local articles

• Modula-2 Legacy Code: Problems and Solutions by Dmitry Leskov. Discusses porting of older Topspeed M2 code to more modern systems

Articles

• Various fixes and workarounds for the 3.10 version of the compiler
• http://www.pmoylan.org/pages/os2/os2m2.html#ts Peter Moylan's assessment of TopSpeed Modula 2

Links

• http://www.excelsior-usa.com/doc/xds/xc22.html
• http://www.nezumi.demon.co.uk/modula/jpi/jpi_m2.htm
• http://www.drdobbs.com/whats-new-with-modula-2/184408565 Announcement of TopSpeed Modula 2 v3 at Dr. Dobbs Site
• http://www.cbronline.com/news/niels_jensen_explains_how_topspeed_leaves_borlands_turbo_compilers_standing Overview of the Topspeed v3 system