Posted by Jim Guerber on April 24, 2009 at 14:58:39:
Comet32 Alpha
As many of you know, we have been working for years to port Comet to 32 bit Windows. Today it is my pleasure to introduce you to that product. Comet 2009 will come in 2 flavors. The first is what everyone has known as Comet all along, (call that Comet16) and the second is Comet32. You may run Comet2009 either way. We suggest that you run Comet16 in production mode, and please help us finalize Comet32 by testing all of your Apps in Comet32.
You must be using REL version 9.01 or higher, as it contains the CMONITOR program required
for Comet32.
To run Comet32, just include “/32” on the command line of the Comet shortcut, it is that simple.
Comet32 will run your current C16 objects as well as C32 programs compiled with Cosm32, the Comet32 compiler. You may freely intermix these programs, even using enter. C32 programs are much more powerful than C16 programs. They may be of almost unlimited size, and support many new verbs and functions. Numeric variables can be up to length 64.32, and strings can be of virtually unlimited length.
Comet32 will run on all Microsoft Windows platforms from Windows XP through Windows 2008 Server and Vista. It WILL run on 64 bit systems.
Limitations:
There are several limitations to Comet32 at this time.
Comet32 will run only with a Comet2009 License.
Some of the drivers are not finished at this time, but may be available by the time we release the Beta. This includes some Printer driver functionality, the spooler, the TCP/IP driver, and XAP.
There will be no sort driver. We have modified the Report Generator to sort using extended keyed files.
You will need UTL version 9.02 or higher for this.
There are no background partitions at this time. For our testing, we have substituted launching a new Comet session for background. I know some of you have programs that run continuously in background. Consider launching them instead.
IB dialog programs are not yet functioning properly.
CurPos, Interrupt, PCOMM, ACTIVATE, and, TERMINATE have not been implemented.
Contiguous file creates are not yet implemented for Comet16 objects.
Flush control to a file is not implemented. You should remove these instructions from your programs.
No image files: Image files are a legacy that is not needed today. They did not save much space, and the coding to make them work within Comet was extensive. Please convert all of your Image files as soon as possible.
No Q-emulation: Just like image files, Q-emulation was a big chunk of assembly code that just was too much to bring from C16 to C32.
We need you to test your programs using this system and let us know what does not work. We have been especially diligent at making sure your C16 programs run exactly the same in Comet32 as they do in Comet16. We have an extensive set of test programs successfully run in Comet32, but there is no substitute for real life experience.
Each file can be a maximum of 1MB in length Uploaded files will be purged from the server on a regular basis.