Other Versions of Turing

[scholarlytutor]

I’m trying to find and collect some of the older copies of Turing. Based on the books I have, it seems that there are quite a few versions not listed on compsci.ca. From one of the posts last year I found out that there was a Turing 8 for DOS, which I didn’t know about. So I thought I’d inquire to see what other copies people have lying around.

The older copies I already have:
Turing 6, 7 and 8 for DOS.
OOTuring 1.95 for Windows 3.1

What I am hoping to find:
Object Oriented Turing for DOS
Other copies of Turing 8 for DOS
Turing for Macintosh (Power PC)
Turing for UNIX

So if you have any of these, or any old version of Turing lying around, please attach it here. I’m also happy to attach any of my copies to whomever is interested.

Also, and this is a long shot: I emailed James Cordy last year (one of the creators of Turing) and apparently the source code for the DOS version of Turing is lost. If it’s discovered, he would like it to be made open source. I doubt that Holtsoft released this source code to anyone, but if by some chance someone does have it or knows anything about it, please let me know.

[cordy]

You can find an open source version of Turing+, the systems implementation language version of original Turing, here: http://txl.ca/txl-tplusdownload.html

Turing+ is a command-line compiler (like gcc) that produces standalone machine code executables from source code on Linux, MacOS, and both Cygwin and MinGW on Windows. Among other things, the original Turing compiler and IDE were written in Turing+.

Some, but not all, features of Turing+ were eventually adopted into Object-Oriented Turing. Turing+ itself is not object-oriented.

Jim Cordy

To quote from the website:

Quote:

Turing+ or T+ for short, is a compatible extension of the Turing programming language that is particularly well-suited to systems programming. T+ has been used for a wide range of systems and teaching applications, including the TXL source transformation system, the NiCad code clone detector, the Grok programming language, the MiniTunis operating system, and the Turing+ compiler itself.

Turing+ is based on the Turing teaching language, and can itself be used to teach both introductory computer programming (using the Tplus programming environment), as well as operating systems, concurrency and systems concepts.

Major extensions to Turing in Turing+ include:

Separate compilation of program parts (modules, monitors and subprograms),
Generalized input/output (random access and binary flies),
Concurrency (processes and monitors), and
Exception handling (the quit statement and handler blocks).
There are a number of other extensions, including extended numeric types (various sizes of integers and reals, and the natural number type), characters and fixed length character strings, bit manipulation, type cheats, general pointers, register variables, procedure variables and assembly language inserts.

[scholarlytutor]

Wow, the great Jim Cordy himself. Welcome! We emailed a bit in the past.

Thanks for reminding me about Turing+. You know, I could never get Turing+ to work, either on my friend's Macbook or in Cygwin. I'm probably just not experienced enough when it comes to UNIX-based operating systems. You wouldn't have any installation instructions by any chance?

Otherwise, any old versions of Turing hiding in the filing cabinets?