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LOGO-L> Berkeley Logo 3.5 available




Brian Harvey (bh@CS.Berkeley.EDU)
Sat, 18 Jan 1997 22:37:59 -0800 (PST)

Release 3.5 of Berkeley Logo is now available by anonymous FTP. Versions
are available for Unix systems, DOS machines, and Macintoys.

This is mostly a maintenance release, with some obscure bugs fixed.
One of them is that turtle wrap mode *really* works right finally!
(It was off by one pixel sometimes.) Others are catching certain
syntax errors instead of dying.

By popular demand (i.e., both George and Yehuda wanted it) this
version has a REPCOUNT operation. Used within a REPEAT, it
outputs the number of times the instruction list has been repeated,
including this time. Try REPEAT 5 [PRINT REPCOUNT].

The library includes a new FILEP predicate, that takes a filename
as its input, and outputs TRUE if that file exists and is readable.
There are also new operations ISEQ and RSEQ to output sequences
of integers or rationals; read the help files for details.

The Unix version has been modified to compile better on other people's
machines. In particular, I hope Linux will be happier with this version.
One important change is that Logo now expects its library and help files to
be installed in /usr/local/lib/logo (see the makefile) instead of looking
in the directory in which it was compiled. You can now use SETBG with
the X windows graphics version.

Still not done: Completely converting to ANSI-style procedure
headers (waiting until all the current development efforts finish
so I have one set of source files!), and the port to Windows.
(There is some WIN32 code in these source files, but it doesn't
work yet.) I expect a version 3.6 pretty soon.

The PC distribution includes two executable programs. BL.EXE runs on any
PC, but is limited to 640K of memory. UCBLOGO.EXE requires a 286-or-better
processor, but is able to take advantage of extended memory if you have it.
Read the README file for technical details.

FTP to anarres.cs.berkeley.edu and get any of the following files:

pub/ucblogo/ucblogo.tar.Z Unix sources and documentation
pub/ucblogo/blogo.exe PC version, PKZIP form, including executables
BL.EXE and UCBLOGO.EXE
pub/ucblogo/ucblogo.sea.hqx Mac version, BinHexed StuffIt form,
w/ executable Logo
pub/ucblogo/usermanual Just the documentation file.

Be sure to use BINARY transfer mode when retrieving the archive files!

Alternatively, you can download Berkeley Logo from the World-Wide Web.
You'll find pointers on http://http.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/

The DOS version is in the form of a self-extracting PKZIP archive. Run
BLOGO.EXE; it will create two files, INSTALL.BAT and INSTALLU.EXE. Then
run INSTALL to create a c:\ucblogo directory with the complete distribution.

The Mac version is in the form of a BinHex-converted self-extracting StuffIt
archive. To install it, just copy to your hard disk, un-BinHex it (this may
be done automatically by your file transfer program), and double-click on it.

The Unix version is a compressed tar file. To install it, copy to your
directory, then say
uncompress ucblogo.tar
tar -xf ucblogo.tar
cd ucblogo
configure
make

The DOS and Mac versions include a SOURCE subdirectory containing the C
source files used to compile Berkeley Logo. If you don't want to play
with the code, you can delete this directory and all its contents.

Advantages of Berkeley Logo:

* It's free.

* It comes with source files (in C).

* Logo programs are completely compatible among Unix, PC, and Mac.

Disadvantages of Berkeley Logo:

* It's pretty slow.

* It doesn't do anything fancy about graphics. (One turtle.)

If you are not on the Internet, the Logo Foundation (250 West 85th St,
New York, NY 10024) distributes the DOS and Mac versions on diskette.
As of spring 1995 they charge $3.50 for postage and handling, but
call them at 212 579-8028 if you are reading this much later than that.
The Logo Foundation also distributes various commercial versions of
Logo, some Logo-related books, and their own newsletter. (The latter
is free!)

You can also look into MSWLogo, which is a free port of Berkeley Logo
to Microsoft Windows done by George Mills. He has added a lot of
Windows-specific capability to the language, so you can do cool
multimedia stuff with it. Look in http://www.ultranet.com/~mills/
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