Every once in awhile I seemingly loose my mind and decide I want to learn another computer programming language. This time around, just for laughs [kicking self in head], I chose Modula-2.
Excelsior is nice enough to offer something called Native XDS-x86 for Windows. It's advertised as a "complete development system that supports full cycle of software development for Microsoft(R) Windows(tm) platforms using Modula-2 and Oberon-2 programming languages."
Unfortunately, getting it installed has not worked out well. First, be aware you have to give them a working e-mail address to which they will send the download URL. I guess harvesting your e-mail address is considered the cost of giving you their software.
After downloading you run their install utility. Said utility defaults to installing in the root of your C: drive. I haven't seen a program try to install to root since Lotus Notes so I was surprised to see it here. Installing into the root directory is not a good thing because there is a limit to how many directories can be created there. In addition, it just clutters up the root directory. So I changed the location to C:\Program Files\Modula\. Everything appeared to install correctly but when I tried to execute the program via the Start Programs menu, Windows could not follow the link created by the install program. So I deleted the links and manually added them to the Start Programs menu.
Once over that hurdle I tried to write and compile a program. Actually, what I did was simply paste an example module that was part of an Internet tutorial into the Integrated Programming Environment (IPE) or Integrated Development Environment (IDE). But having done so, I found I could not run or compile the code as all of those types of options were grayed out.
So, to the help file I went. The first thing you apparently have to do is manually create a project directory. The help file says to issue a command line sequence that will run part of their program and create the required sub-directories after you've created a directory. Hmmmm. It sure would be nice if that was taken care of without having to drop into the command line to do it. Little did I know that apparently a lot of things would need to be run from the command line. But I digress.
So I create a directory for projects and then go to the
command line and type in xcwork
which creates the sub-directories. That appeared to work fine
so I exited from the DOS box and tried to compile/run the
code. Nope. Still grayed out. Sigh.
About then is when I ran out of time and patience. I'll get around to reading the help file some more to figure out just what I need to do to get this program to run in Windows (I know you can run the compiler from the command line but that defeats the purpose of having "a complete development system...for Microsoft Windows..." You may as well have a machine running DOS 5 or some such for all the help that this Windows IPE/IDE program gives.
