First HAL impressions...

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First HAL impressions...

OK. I installed VBRUN100.DLL (I only needed it once, but thanks anyway to
the three people who sent me copies...) and tried HAL. I'm not sure what to
say.

For one, I compiled a few programs, and the divide error never happened
once. Not once. I have no idea why, or if that happens every so often or
whatever.

The TI-85.H file which comes with HAL is the same TI-85.H file that came
with ZShell 4.0. As a result, it's probably really old, and I have a newer
copy somewhere around here. If I install a newer TI-85.H file, will HAL
choke?

I compiled & assembled TANK!.HAL, but I'm not sure what to say about it. It
crashes my calculator after I start it and press F1 to (presumably) start
playing. I couldn't find a break, if it was waiting for something.
Moreover, I noticed that strange numbers would appear at the bottom of the
screen if I plugged my Graph Link cable in and started sending messages to
the calculator. Maybe it's a two player game, but there isn't any
documentation...

The ETCH.HAL (or whatever it's called) wouldn't compile for a TI-85. It
says at the beginning of the program: "For the 83!" But I thought that HAL
was supposed to cross-compile code compatible to run on the assemblers on
any calculator. Any ideas?

If I used Windows to permanently assign the extension "HAL" to the SuperHAL
program, SuperHAL would launch, but not open the program. Once I found this
out, I tried to remove the assignment. Then I learned that once an
extension is assigned in Windows, it's not easy to undo - after spending
hours banging my head against the system, I finally figured out how to
manually remove the assignment using the registry editor. Operating systems
shouldn't be this user unfriendly. I still stand by my opinion on how poor
an OS shell Windows is...

The documentation needs work - a **LOT** of work. If I'm going to program
for HAL, the source code for some programs is nice, but I'd like some real
documentation with real syntaxes and explanations. The help file needs some
major attention for the next version...

All in all, though; I think HAL is a great idea, and it's only version 1.0.
Not having totally explored what HAL can do yet, for right now I'm
indifferent about it. I'll be spending some more time with it, though.

Nick Zitzmann                             No WWW page at this time.
(Resident Macintosh Tweaker)
                                          Windows 95:
                                          From the people who brought you
                                            EDLIN!