From: PHILIP BURNS

(Message from the SMUG BBS, Formerly SUGI/SIG, Rockville)


I received my copy of Turbo 3.0 today. I have only worked with it
for a few hours, but my initial impressions are extremely
positive:

 (1)  All the bugs I encountered in release 2.0
      have been fixed.

 (2)  The compiler is AT LEAST twice as fast as
      before.  For example, a 10000+ line program
      I have which used to take 9+ minutes to
      compile now compiles in less than four minutes.

 (3)  The generated code is substantially smaller --
      as much as 35% for some of my programs --
      and runs considerably faster.

 (4)  The editor appears to run much faster --
      nearly instantaneous screen updates, etc.

 (5)  The PC/DOS version (which I am using) includes
      standard procedures for directory access and
      manipulation.  In addition, file names may now
      contain drive/subdirectory information:
      a file name like 'C:\mydirec\myfile.dat' is now legal.

 (6)  The installation program allows you to define
      the drive/directory for the message file.
      No more having to have multiple copies strewn
      all over your disks!

 (7)  The are a number of system-interface
      procedures for getting command line arguments,
      defining a path for TURBO overlays, etc.

 (8)  There are a number of advanced graphics
      functions -- for generating circles,
      fill patterns, etc. -- as well a very nice
      implementation of Turtle graphics.

 (9)  Full I/O redirection on standard files is
      provided.  The run-time package also uses
      standard MS DOS file handles.

      NOTE:  THIS MEANS THAT TURBO 3.0 WILL ONLY RUN
             UNDER MSDOS/PCDOS RELEASE 2.0 OR LATER!

(10)  You can change buffer sizes for files.

(11)  You can open a file for append.

(12)  Text I/O is considerably faster -- especially
      with larger buffer sizes -- and a number of new
      procedures are available for manipulating text files.

(13)  External assembler procedures appear to work
      correctly now.

(14)  The BCD version provides nice editing facilities
      for numbers, which should ease writing
      business-oriented programs.

On the negative side, there are a few things still missing:

 (1)  Still no integer type > 16 bits.

 (2)  Still no out-of-block GOTOs.  (This hinders writing
      parsers using recursive descent.)

 (3)  The 8087 version still only supports the
      64-bit real -- no 32 bit reals, no 80 bit reals,
      no long integers, etc.

 (4)  There are quite a few errors in the published
      documentation. Hence, you MUST READ CAREFULLY the
      README file enclosed on the distribution disk.

One word of caution about Turbo 3.0 -- in fixing the EOLN and
related functions, Borland changed their function a little when
applied to Kbd.  If you apply EOLN to KBD, you'll find things
get a little behind -- there's a one-character delay.  This means
that if you wrote your own procs to process/edit input lines,
and you used EOLN(Kbd), then THEY WON'T WORK ANYMORE.  The easiest
fix is to check for a carriage return character and not bother
with the EOLN -- not exactly standard Pascal, but what the heck,
who cares anyway.

