Re: Meridian Ada compiler for Macintosh

[dnsurber@lescsse.jsc.nasa.gov (Douglas Surber)]

I have been using  the Meridian Ada compiler for the Macintosh for about
four weeks now.  Overall I am pleased; it does almost everything I want
to do.

However . . .  You cannot make calls to QuickDraw except from the main
task.  I had originally planned on structuring my applications as
several tasks, one to handle window management, one to handle mouse and
keyboard events, one (or more) to do the real work.  But this doesn't 
work.  These secondary tasks cannot make QuickDraw calls. :-(

I haven't done any poking around to determine why this is the case, but
my guess is that the secondary task stack space is allocated on the heap
so QuickDraw thinks that StackTop has passed HeapTop and generates an
out of memory condition.  For dynamically created tasks I can see why
allocating the task stack space on the heap would be necessary, but for
static tasks it should be possible to allocate the stack space at the 
bottom of the main task stack.  This would keep QuickDraw from getting
confused.

I talked to Meridian and they said they would have a techie type call me,
but they haven't done so yet.

Other than the above I am pleased, and you can't beat the price.  The
$149 price expires the comming Sunday 31MAR91, so if you are interested,
hurry.

Douglas Surber

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