28 lines
1.5 KiB
Plaintext
28 lines
1.5 KiB
Plaintext
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ATLAST is an attempt to make software component technology and open
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architecture applications commonplace in the mainstream software
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market. It is both a software component which can be readily
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integrated into existing applications, providing them a ready-made
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macro language and facilities for user extension and customisation
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and, at the same time, it is a foundation upon which new applications
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can be built in an open, component-oriented manner.
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ATLAST was developed at Autodesk, Inc. Autodesk returned the rights
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to me in 1991, and I subsequently placed the program in the public
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domain.
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ATLAST is based upon the FORTH-83 language, but has been extended in
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many ways and modified to better serve its mission as an embedded
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toolkit for open, programmable applications. ATLAST is implemented in
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a single file, written in portable C; it has been ported to many
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different machines and operating systems, including MS-DOS, OS/2, the
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Macintosh, and a wide variety of Unix machines. ATLAST includes
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native support for floating point, C-like strings, Unix-compatible
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file access, and a wide variety of facilities for embedding within
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applications. Integers are 32 bits and identifiers can be up to 127
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characters; extensive stack and heap pointer checking is available to
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aid in debugging. ATLAST may be configured at compilation time to
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include only the facilities needed by a given application, thus saving
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memory and increasing execution speed (when error checking is
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disabled).
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---John Walker.
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