Columns

CUG New Releases

GNU C++ And Spell Checker

Kenji Hino

Kenji Hino is a member of The C User's Group technical staff. He holds a B.S.C.S. from McPherson College and an undergraduate degree in metallurgy from a Japanese university. He enjoys playing drums in a reggae band.

New Distribution Fees

The order blanks in the center of this magazine reflect a new fee schedule for C Users Group Library Volumes. Under the new fee schedule, you will pay $4.00 per disk (not volume). If the volume fits on one disk, it will cost only $4. If the volume spans three disks, it will cost $12. There is also a $3.50 shipping and handling fee paid for each order.

We've decided to make our fee schedule consistent with established practice in user-supported software. Our previous "one price per volume" fees have caused quite a bit of confusion. It's just too easy to compare the "per disk" rates of other sources with our "per volume" rate and conclude that we're gouging our customers. In fact, because so many of our volumes are multi-disk sets, we expect the average order to change very little. The major effect will be to decrease the price on orders which include several one-disk volumes and increase the price of orders which include several multi-disk volumes.

Please examine the new order form and let us know if you have any questions or if you have suggestions for improving it.

Update

CUG350 PCX Graphics Library

Ian Ashdown (CANADA) has updated his PCX Graphics Library, PCX_LIB. The new version is 1.00C and corrects the following bugs:

1. PCX_LIB didn't work properly when compiled under the 80x86 compact or large model and the data segments exceed 64KB in size.

2. The "usage" display of RD_DEMO and WR_DEMO didn't always display the full text.

New Releases

CUG359 GNU C/C++ for 386

Written by Free Software Foundation, ported to DOS by DJ Delorie and submitted by Henri de Feraudi (FRANCE) and Mike Linderman (CANADA), this package contains a 32-bit 80386 DOS extender with symbolic debugger, a C/C++ compiler with utilities, development libraries, and source code. It generates full 32- bit programs and supports full virtual memory with paging to disk. The package requires a 80386-based IBM compatible PC or PS/2. The 80387 emulator currently does not emulate trancendental functions (exp, sin,.. etc). The software requires approximately 4-5 MB of hard drive space is required. 640KB RAM is required.

The following hardware is supported:

V86 programs, QEMM, 386MAX, DesqView, Windows/386 are not supported.

The disk includes binary executable files: C/C++ compilers, LALR(1) parser (bison), lexical parser (flex), C/C++ preprocessor, 80386/80387 assembler, a.out (BSD) format linker (ld), archive utility, symbol stripper, compilation coodinator, basic 32-bit DOS extender, symbolic debugger, etc.

In addition, libraries that support standard routines, math routines, graphics, and mouse routines (These are compiled with gcc. The source code is included in the disk.), include- header files, documentation, sources for extender and various VGA/SuperVGA drivers, diffs from FSF distributions to DOS-compatible, sources for the utilities, sample C++ sources using graphics and mouse, and 80387 emulator for non- 80386 systems.

Due to the volume of files and DOS nature of programs, all files are archived by PKZIP (unzip utility is also included) and the archived file is separated into pieces by "split" utility. Thus, only MS-DOS disk format is distributed from us.

CUG360 Uspell

Bill McCullough (MO) has contributed a spell checker program, Uspell. Uspell is basically a modification of CUG217 Spell, however significantly optimized to improve the performance under UNIX. The optimization techniques Uspell uses include: replacing scanf with a single read, retaining the whole index in memory, converting input words to five-bit format before spell checking, reading the dictionary in increments of file system blocks caching locally, eliminating stdio functions, etc.

The disk includes C source code for spell checker, ASCII text dictionary, compressed dictionary and index files, and a utility used to convert the ASCII text dictionary to compressed one.

CUG Directory III

The C Users' Group Directory III will be available the first of April. The directory has capsuled descriptions of CUG 250 through 299. The first (CUG100-199) and second (CUG 200- 249) volume of the directory are currently available through R&D Publications, Inc.