As a professional software developer, I find it difficult to recommend any software development tool that is not available on more than one major computing platform. Although Prograph CPX has a 1.0 release number on it, Prograph has been available on the Macintosh for several years. Now, with its "professional" version, Prograph International is prepared to move off the Macintosh.
According to product manager Mark Szpakowski, Prograph will be shipped for the Windows platform during the first quarter of 1995. A Unix version is also in the works, but exact release dates are not yet available. A Power Macintosh version should be available by the time you read this.
Prograph is a 32-bit development system and will requi
re a 32-bit operating system for developing and running the final executable. The initial target development environment will be Windows NT and Windows 95 when it is available. The programs you create with Prograph will also be able to run under Windows 3.1 with the Win 32s extensions.
Prograph International appears to be taking a reasonable approach to cross-platform compatibility. It is not attempting to maintain 100 percent compatibility with the low-level Macintosh-style calls in the current Prograph. Rather, the compatibility level is focused on the ABC class library and as many of the lower-level Prograph primitives as make sense. A platform-specific layer of primitives will provide full access to the Windows API, just as Macintosh users have full access to the Mac Toolbox.
Mr. Szpakowski notes that Prograph's built-in database capability will be available across platforms, with the ability of sharing the resulting files among Mac, Windows, and Unix applications. In addition, access to ext
ernal database systems through ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) will be identical on the Mac and under Windows.
Crossing Platforms
