3.1285 MaxSPITBOL (36)

Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca)
Mon, 9 Apr 90 22:37:41 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 1285. Monday, 9 Apr 1990.

Date: Mon, 9 Apr 90 05:08:00 EDT
From: PETERR@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK
Subject: RE: 3.1266 Mac affairs, cont. (73)

Good words for MaxSPITBOL: I have used it fairly extensively over the last
six months and I am immensely impressed. (1) It is QUICK. I have a c. 1500 word
program for collating manuscripts, written originally to run on the Oxford VAX.
Not only does the program run with just the most minor changes (to do with
file handling) on the Mac - something I couldn't achieve on a PC - it runs
just as quick on the Mac SE (not the SE/30!), cost #1300, as on the VAX, cost
#300.000. Running on a Mac IIcx, or on a SE/30 it leaves the VAX chewing dust.
(2) It makes elegant and rational use of the Mac interface. Considering the
roots of SPITBOL in the world of batch command-lines, this is quite an
achievement. You can run the program in one window, viewing the results in
another, looking at source code in another, looking at the files you are
operating on in another - and so on. It has also got about the neatest on-line
help system I have seen, so neat I have cheerfully nicked its look and feel
for the updated version of my collation programs I am now writing (in C) for
the Mac. (Go ahead and sue me then). (3) the documentation is superb.

In short: anyone who is looking for a good way into text processing programs
on the Mac must look at this one.
P.S. the manuscript collation program referred to above is 1500 lines, not 1500
words.
Peter Robinson, Computers and Manuscripts Project, Oxford University
Computing Service.