HiSoft Devpac Amiga 3.14 ------------------------ 16th Dev 1994 ------------- Welcome to Devpac 3! This file is intended to supplement the manual, giving you the latest information on your version of Devpac. A summary of the major changes can be found at the end of this file. A complete set of include files for programming Release 3.1 of the operating system is now supplied in place of the Workbench 2 includes. These also cover Release 2.04, 2.05, 2.1 and 3.0. See the Contents file for details. Installation Notes ------------------ If backing up your Devpac disks with Workbench, rename each one afterwards to remove the words 'copy of '. Please note that Program Disk 2.0 is a FastFileSystem disk and is unreadable from Workbench 1.3. When installing on a hard disk, first copy the Devpac drawer by dragging its icon, then drag the appropriate Include drawer inside the new Devpac drawer. You may wish to update the Include setting on the Assembly Control requester and the Default Tools of icons in Env-Archive (using Info from Workbench) to include the correct volume names for your system. Environment Support ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ Devpac's environment support follows Workbench 2 conventions which 1.3 users may wish to use on their own disks. Each time you reboot, the Startup-sequence initialises ENV: on the Ram Disk with the contents of Env-Archive from the Prefs drawer, known as ENVARC:. If you wish an ENV: file to survive rebooting, you must also save a copy in ENVARC:. Devpac looks in ENV:Devpac for settings files, assembly options and default icons, which may also appear in ENV:Sys. To create icons for assembled files other than executables you must provide a suitably named default icon. The 1.3 editor will not save any icons at all if defaults cannot be found. Editing ------- The Devpac editor has been enhanced to take advantage of Workbench 3 features, if available, including new look menus and scroll bars, plus the new palette and busy pointer preferences. When starting Devpac from a CLI, an empty window is now created for any named file which is not found. The Workbench 2 version also recognises AmigaDOS patterns such as "#?.i" which would open all the files ending in ".i". There is now a new command on the Project menu. 'Load' (Amiga-L) is useful when you wish to open a file without having it create an extra window like Open does. Instead, Load replaces the current project with the selected file, prompting first if the project has been modified (like the Devpac 2 'Load' command). The shortcut Shift-Amiga-L may be used to activate the 'Last Saved' command. The 'Close' command (Amiga-K) has moved to the Window menu and now only closes the current window. 'Delete' is now only provided in the 1.3 version (see below). Some other Window menu commands now have shortened names. Block marking is now achieved much more easily using the Mark Block (Amiga-B) command on the Edit menu. After starting a block mark, moving the cursor will set the current block, until the Mark Block command is used again. The Function keys (F1-F10) now provide direct access to the bookmarks, without the need for any qualifier key. A Bookmark may be set via Shift-F<1-10>. If "Create Icons?" is checked on the settings menu then the bookmarks associated with a file will be saved when the file is saved. A number of new settings have been added. A flashing cursor is optional and the Shift-Backspace command (delete to start of line) may be disabled. 'Save Before Run' will automatically save any modified projects when you select Run or Debug. This safeguards you in case your program crashes and ensures that the correct source files are used for debugging. Selecting 'Ask' produces a requester before saving whilst 'Yes' saves all changes without prompting. 'Program Window' lets you choose if a window is produced when you Run or Debug and whether it waits for a keypress before closing. With Workbench 2 the window only appears if used and is closed by Ctrl-\. Under 1.3, the message ' failed returncode ' may appear. This is simply what was returned in register D0, it does not indicate there was any problem running your program. Two settings are only accessible by manually editing settings files: the clipboard unit number (CLIP=) and the program window size (OUTPUTWIN=,,,). In the first printing of the manual, page 33 shows the split and join line keyboard shortcuts the wrong way round (Ctrl-= should be first). The end of the 3rd paragraph on page 41 should say the LEFT Amiga key and the Find Error keyboard shortcut on page 60 should be Ctrl-F. Additional shortcuts are: Right Amiga-I Paste File Right Amiga-K Close Window Ctrl-Shift-A Arguments Ctrl-Shift-D Debug other program (see below) Ctrl-O Output Symbols (was Ctrl-S) Ctrl-S Set Settings Ctrl-K Delete to End of Line Shift-F3 Cut (was Erase) Shift-Alt-cursors Scroll window Use Esc to close the Find requester if you wish to retain its contents. To enter Find text without an automatic Find Next, hold down Ctrl, Shift or Alt when pressing Return (this also works with other editor text gadgets). The Shift-keypad shortcuts are now optional and bookmarks may be set using the numeric keypad for the benefit of French users. Note that the current line and column numbers appear in the About requester (accessed via the Help key). File Requesters --------------- Although the ARP file requester used by the 1.3 editor has an internal limit of 32 characters for directory names, it is possible to overcome this with Devpac. To specify a long pathname such as "HardDisk:Devpac/programs/graphics/ drawing.s" for example, you can select "HardDisk:Devpac/ programs" as the Drawer and then type "graphics/drawing.s" into the File gadget. The Workbench 2 editor uses the Commodore ASL file requester and Devpac is now supplied with version 2.1 of the asl.library. 2.0 users may wish to copy this file onto their Workbench disks. Note that you can delete files directly from the new file requester with the 'Delete' menu option. Some users may wish to use a program which replaces standard requesters with its own, such as the public domain ReqTools library. Assembly -------- Load and Save assembly options on the Assembly Settings menu now have the word Opts added. To save the options use Save Opts, Save Opts As or the Save button on the Assembly Control requester. Save Settings is for editor settings only; it does not save assembly options. GenAm recognises the following additional command line options: INCDIR Same as -I HEADER Same as -H LIST Same as LIST in the source NOLIST Same as NOLIST in the source NOCODES Suppress highlighting of error position QUIET Only give error and warning messages ? Show the command template (GENAM ?) The assembler now warns you about out of range bit numbers as in BTST #9,(a0). Three new OPT directives, CHKBIT, WARNBIT and NOCHKBIT give you control over whether this is an error (the default), a warning or disabled. Directories without explicit file names are now supported for output paths if you include a trailing '/' or ':' symbol. Note that symbol files are case sensitive according to how they are assembled. The supplied system.gs file is not intended for use with Case Insensitive assembly. The additional macro symbol \? may be used to find the length of a macro parameter: \?1 will return the length of the first parameter, \?2 the second etc. The assembler now warns if a trailing comma is found at the end of a DC directive, normally this will mean that you have accidentally included an extra space in the list of values in the statement. Debugging --------- Shift-Debug will enter MonAm without the current program. This may be used to debug a different program or examine system structures and is similar to the 'MonAm' option in the Devpac 2 editor. When a program is started from MonAm, all of the registers except D0, A0 and A7 are now set to non-zero values to help you track down bugs in your programs since AmigaDOS does NOT guarantee that registers will initially be zero. For Workbench 2 and above, MonAm's screen uses the same monitor and screen mode as Workbench by default and there are now three interlace preference options as follows (note that all of these use the 'text' size set from the Overscan preferences editor): Y Default monitor (PAL/NTSC), interlaced N Default monitor (PAL/NTSC), non-interlaced D Same monitor and screen mode as Workbench To activate a MonAm window, press Right Amiga and the window number. This will adjust the display to reveal the window, if it is currently hidden, and then activate it. You can also use the Tab key to cycle through the windows. Note that MonAm is not 'pure' for use with the AmigaDOS RESIDENT command. MonAm 3.06 is now 'Enforcer aware' (the MMU based debugging tool); what this means is that MonAm now checks strictly for valid memory areas based on the OS lists. In particular, location 4 is not a valid memory location (according to the OS lists), hence MonAm will not allow it to be read. If you have any comments, suggestions or problems with this or any HiSoft product, please contact us at: HiSoft The Old School Greenfield Bedford MK45 5DE U.K. Tel: +44 (0)1525 718181 Fax: +44 (0)1525 713716