I want to get into programming my Apple IIgs and I want to be able to do it on a very limited budget. When I found TML Pascal II on the Apple IIgs Fairway site, I thought all of my prayers were answered. I'll be able to program my IIgs using a language I have used before (albeit 15 years ago) and I'll be able to delay learning 65816 assembler a little bit longer. 
Anyway, I fired up TML Pascal II and very quickly realised that by itself it was pretty useless. There is a distinct difference between knowing the language and knowing the development platform! Oh well I thought, back to the drawing board.
Then one day I came across a French IIgs site that had a copy of the TML Pascal II Reference Manual. Great! I thought, now I should be in business. I opened up the document and....what....noooo! The document had been translated into French. Great, back to square one.
Then I had another sadistic idea, what if I were to run the French document through one of the online translation services and re-translate the document back into English. Well, with few options remaining, that is exactly what I did. I used three different free automated translation services and correlated the results to try and make sense of it. I used this method, converting chunks at a time and using my own software background to try and make sense of the translated text - after all, the automated translators are ordinary at best. Try them and you will see what I mean.
After about 8 weeks of slogging away like this, I finally managed to complete the translation. The final draft which I am now releasing has 138 pages. Some of it still has that "Chinese VCR manual" kinda feel to it, but overall I am happy with the end result. I expect to put the document into subversion for revision control and continue refining it so that it uses "better" English.
I just hope this encourages a few more developers to take a look at the IIgs, with the hope of injecting a little bit of life into a platform which sees little software developed for it these days.
Enjoy!
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19/08/2007 |
Thanks to Paul Zaleski who unearthed this rare gem, you can now download the last version of TML Pascal released - Complete Pascal 2.0! |
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