Hey, Richard, I'd give Tom Pittman many kudos for inventing CompilIt! - sure, it was convoluted concept, but it saved my ass many times in a working environment. In 1989 I did a lot with text string manipulation and hex-decimal conversion in software designed to go through a serial port to some hardware for control.

http://barncard.com/amstudios/htdoc/Pages/welcome_PP.html


Hypertalk, even the improved versions later was still way too slow. So I used both Compilit! and Hyperbasic to make XCMDs that really sped up workflow. Hyperbasic was preferred because they had the better serial port code, which I had to use in a loop. Interperted hypertalk was way too slow. But Compilit was great for complex text manipulation.


I had never heard of the 'unreleased derivative' you speak of... interesting.

The 'funky syntax' you mentioned wasn't that hard - most of it was optimizing loops and helping the compiler recognize integers (by adding zero), the rest ran quite automatically. I thought it was brilliant.

sqb


kee nethery wrote:
long ago in Hypercard land there was a product that would compile hypertalk into an XFCN or XCMD. I would not be surprised if someone on this list wrote it. Perhaps it is time for them to update and productize it?

That was CompileIt!, written by Tom Pittman. I enjoyed working with an unreleased derivative of it made by Mark Hanrek, which automated a lot of the symbol linking and stuff that made Pittman's interface nearly impossible to work with.


On top of that, since xTalk was never designed for compilation you had to do a lot of funky syntax to get any reasonable compilation. In retrospect, working with C is in many ways simpler than the odd Symbol Table-HyperTalk mish-mash that CompileIt! required.


-- Richard Gaskin
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