It's been a long time since I last released any information about the
status of IZL version 2.0, so I thought I'd keep you all up to date on
where things stand. I've also enclosed a list of features that are
incorporated into version 2.0.
The product is currently in beta test, and has been for a few months. The
version that is undergoing test has most of the features described below.
The last two months have seen very little action, due to a personal family
crisis, which recently ended. That being said, the completion of the
features list, and upgrading of the user documentation should make IZL 2.0
available by late July.
Which brings us to issues related to the product release itself:
There will be a SHAREWARE version of an IZL 2.0 interpreting engine
(a.k.a runtime package) which will be able to execute programs that
have been created with the commercial interpreter product, and saved
in a binary-format tokenized file. The registration fee for the IZL
2.0 runtime engine will be $20, and the engine will be available for
download in all of the well-known Zoomer/GEOS places in cyberspace
(AOL, CIS, Internet public ftp, etc...)
The actual IZL interpreter will sell for $56 + $3 shipping/handling.
As stated upon the release of version 1.0, current owners of version
1.0 can purchase version 2.0 for half price ($28 + $3 S/H).
The release of the shareware runtime engine for public download will
occur when the commercial product is complete and available for sale.
The coming release of will provide more objects for manipulation, and
overcome some shortcomings of the 1.0 version of the product. All of
the new language features are supported by the runtime engine's processing
of the token files output by the non-shareware interpreter product. A
short list of the enhancements is given below:
Support of floating point numeric storage for variables rather
than the fixed point binary currently in use in version 1.0.
Serial I/O on all COMM ports, including the Zoomer IR.
An EVAL function to allow the IZL programmer access to the
parse library, so that string variables in an IZL program could
be evaluated as expressions, yielding a value to be saved in
another string variable.
Arrays of strings, currently version 1.0 only allows arrays of
floating point numeric variables.
Arrays of bytes, which will allow File/Serial I/O of characters that
the GEOS expression library keeps tripping over.
Arrays of objects, allowing one section of IZL object definition code
to define a group of objects of the same type.
Access to GEOS graphics primitives.
Animation via X,Y manipulation of IZL objects.
File COPY, RENAME and DELETE statements.
SETDIR statement to set current directory.
File selector object to allow a file to be chosen from a
directory list for the purpose of opening.
Also in the works are text objects with built-in links to files or
serial ports, such that interaction with the text object has an
immediate, direct effect on the file or serial port. In the same
way, activity on the serial port would immediately be reflected
in the text object. These objects (COMM_WINDOW and FILE_WINDOW)
will allow the creation of highly functional IZL applications with
very little code needed to be written. COMM_WINDOW would be ideal
for custom PDA communication situations.
Thanx for your time and interest....
-- John Feras Zoomers do more for you with IZL Interpreted Zoomer Language from... jferas@access.netaxs.com Feras Information Technologies