7.1 vs 4.5

 BBS: Inland Empire Archive
Date: 04-18-92 (22:26)             Number: 133
From: MICHAEL MALLEY               Refer#: NONE
  To: MARSHALL EMM                  Recvd: NO  
Subj: 7.1 vs 4.5                     Conf: (2) Quik_Bas
ME>Musta been asleep or something, but just heard about the $99 "upgrade"
ME>from QB45 to 7.1 offer.  As a reasonably happy QB45 user, I have to
ME>ask-- what's in PDS7.1 that is worth $99 to me?

Whew!  When you ask for a favor, you ask for a favor!  Let me try to
skim over some of the more important reasons.

1.  Two excellently written manuals in two D-ring binders
2.  Codeview
3.  The programmer's workbench
4.  Toolboxes for user interfaces (CUA), presentation graphics (GUI text
    like Windows and charts like pie chart, etc...), matrix math,
    financial math libraries, and date/time libraries.
5.  Support for far strings with a potential of 192K of string storage
    without counting recursive procedures (64K per invocation).
6.  OS/2 protected mode programs
7.  Customizable menus for the IDE (Integrated Development Environment
    i.e. QB.EXE)
8.  Overlay support for programs up to 16 megabytes.
9.  ISAM database development (worth the $99 all by itself IMO)
10. Local error handling.
11. Rediminsion arrays without losing the values.
12. Support for the BYVAL keyword for BASIC procedures.
13. A plethora of new commands and statements such as DIR$, CURDIR$,
    CHDRIVE, etc...
14. Better code generation (faster and smaller).
15. The libraries are more granular (see smaller above).
16. You can customize on-line help for BASIC and other MS products.
17. View all help files for any MS product without starting those
    products (Quick Help).
18. EMS support for more room for code and data.
19. 286 code development
20. Faster IEEE math package and an alternate math package.
21. Currency variable type (for money figures, what else [Grin]?)
22. TYPE variables can contain static arrays.
23. Double the debug watch in QB.
24. The Microsoft editor.
25. NMAKE (MAKE's much better sucessor)
26. Build custom runtime libraries.
27. Compatability with MS C 6.0+
28. Improved COM support.

There may be a couple of others, but I can't remember them off the top
of my head.

- Michael  :)

 * SLMR 2.1a * BASIC programmers never die, they GOSUB and don't RETURN.

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