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Designed for computer science instruction, Turing is simply the
easiest, most fun, and most effective way of teaching programming concepts.
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Technical Support for Turing
Current Versions of Turing Software
| Microsoft Windows |
Turing 4.0.3 (See note below)
Latest patch: 4.0.4d |
| Apple Macintosh |
OOT for Macintosh 1.5.1 |
Note that OOT for Windows 4.0.3 is the latest version distributed by the
Ontario Ministry of Education.
Release Notes for Turing 4.0.3
Full information about Turing 4.0.3 is available in the
release notes.
Important Information on Turing 4.0.3
Turing 4.0.3 is not feature complete. There are some features that did not
make it into the current release due to time constraints. These features
will be added over the next few months. If any of the missing features are
important to your teaching, please continue to use WinOOT 3.1.1.
Features not yet implemented:
- The Sprite module
- View Variables
- The Joystick Module
- RGB.SetColor
New Features of Turing 4.0.3
Turing 4.0 has a variety of new features. For more information, please
consult the release notes.
- New, easier-to-use user interface. The interface has been
simplified from WinOOT 3.1.1 to make it more accessable to younger
students.
- Breakpoints. You can make Turing pause execution at any arbitrary
location by graphically setting a breakpoint on the line on which to
pause. See the on-line help for instructions on how to use breakpoints.
- Resource Usage. Turing 4.0.3 allows you to see all open files,
fonts, pictures, directories, etc. This allows students to see when a
program is not properly closing open files. See the on-line help for
instructions on how to view program resources.
- "text" mode available. The output window can be set to
text mode. In text mode any output that scrolls off
the top of the screen is preserved and can be inspected using the
scroll bar on the right hand side. Printing the output window results
in all program output being printed, not just what appears on the
screen. Saving the output results in a text file containing all the
output.
- Easier run window positioning. The run window can more easily
be positioned to any side of the screen (or in the screen centre).
- Open Printer as a file. As in "Classic Turing for DOS", the
printer can be opened as a ASCII file and output sent to it. When the
file is closed, the output is spooled to the printer.
- Input/Output redirection improvements. Input can be redirected to
come from a file and be echoed to the screen. Output can be redirected
to go to the screen and a file or a screen and the printer
simultaneously.
- New predefined functions. Turing 4.0.3 introduces a host of new
predefined routines. To get more information about these routines,
check with the on- line help.
- Pic.Rotate - Rotate a bitmap an arbitrary number of degrees
- Pic.Scale - Scale a bitmap to any size. The width and height can
be scaled independently.
- Pic.Width and Pic.Height - Obtain the width and height of a
picture.
- Pic.FlipVertical and Pic.FlipHorizontal - Flip a bitmap over a
vertical or horizontal axis.
- Music.PlayFileStop - Stop music playing from a file.
- Input.Keydown - Determine which keys are currently depressed.
- Input.Flush - Flushes the keyboard buffer.
- Sys.Exec - Launch a third-party application or file.
- Sys.GetUserName and Sys.GetComputerName - Obtain the current user
name and the name of the workstation.
- View.Update and Window.Update - Used in conjunction with
setscreen ("offscreenonly") to produce smooth, flicker- free
animation.
- Enhanced predefined functions. Turing 4.0.3 has enhanced some
previously existing predefined routines. To get more information about
these routines, check with the on- line help.
- Music.PlayFile - Now plays MP3’s on machines equipped with the
appropriate Microsoft Media Player.
- Pic.FileNew - Now loads JPEG’s. Sadly, due to patent licensing
issues, GIF importation will not be supported until the GIF
patent runs out in a few years.
Known Bugs in Turing 4.0.3
There are some known bugs in Turing 4.0.3.
If you are using an earlier version of the software, you are advised to
upgrade to Turing 4.0.4d.
We urge you to update your
installation of Turing and have your students email any crashes or improper
behaviour in the IDE to west@hsa.on.ca.
Bugs fixed in the latest patch (Turing 4.0.4 [d]).
- A bug that caused a crash if you loaded a BMP or GIF file that was
labelled as a JPEG. Note GIF support must wait until Jun, 2003, when
the Unisys patent expires (4.0.4 [d])
- A bug that caused the tell function to misreport the file position
after a call to eof (4.0.4 [d])
- A bug that caused the Lexer module in "support\lib\Lexer" not to
work correctly. (4.0.4 [d])
- Two routines: View.UpdateArea and Window.UpdateArea now exist. They
operate like View.Update and Window.Update except that they only
update a specified area of the screen. It's useful when animating
only a small section of the screen. (4.0.4 [d])
- A bug causing a crash if you did not specify the suffix to a
graphics file in the Pic module. (4.0.4 [d])
- The Net module now works *much* more reliably. (4.0.4 [c])
- Turing crashed with "object not freed" message when program run
in programs with lots of different types of objects (4.0.4 [c])
- Turing could re-use the ID numbers of non-freed objects when
allocating objects after having freed some others. (4.0.4 [c])
- Turing crashed with "infinite loop" assertion failure when deleting
text in rare circumstances (4.0.4 [c])
- On certain machines Turing crashed when a window was opened (4.0.4 [c])
- Time.SecParts produced incorrect output (4.0.4 [b])
- On certain machines Turing crashed when it was started (4.0.4 [b])
- On certain machines running a program produces a "segmentation fault" message (4.0.4 [b])
- The date and time functions did not produce correct output (4.0.4 [a])
- When using Windows set to large fonts, the editor buttons did
not display correctly (4.0.4 [a])
- When reading from a binary file, use of eof could cause a problem
when followed by a seek or a write (4.0.4 [a])
- The Save button on a graphics output window in 32-bit color
produced an incorrect BMP file (4.0.4 [a])
- Turing provides more detailed errors in bug reports (4.0.4 [a])
Reporting Bugs in Turing 4.0
If Turing crashes or has an assertion failure, it produces a file called
panic.log in the Turing startup directory. In a network situation,
this may well be the student's home directory. We would be extremely
grateful if you e-mail the panic.log file to our technical team at
west@hsa.on.ca along with a brief
description (if possible) of what was being done when the Turing crashed
(along the lines of "I pressed F1 to run the program" or "I pressed the
OK button in the Find dialog").
In cases where Turing is not crashing but not executing correctly, please
email our technical team at
west@hsa.on.ca with a description of the
problem and, if possible, some sample code that causes the problem. A
description of the version of Windows or MacOS is also appreciated.
Current Patches for Turing 4.0
There are two updates available for Turing. You only require one, depending
on which version of Turing you currently own:
Both updaters are executable installers that will attempt to find Turing on
the hard drive. They will then install the new version of Turing over top
of the old version. Please note that Turing must already be installed on
the machine.
Updates from Object Oriented Turing 3.1.1 or earlier
If you are
- an individual who purchased Object Oriented Turing 3.1 or
earlier you should email Tom West at Holt Software along with your
registration number (found in the first page of the Turing
Reference Manual that accompanied the software).
- an individual who obtained the software from your teacher at
your school, then you should obtain an updated version of the
software from your school.
- an Ontario public high school, contact your OSAPAC representative to
obtain a recent version of Turing under the province-wide license.
OSAPAC representatives for all boards can be found
www.osapac.org and fill in your board name for site.
- Other schools should contact Holt Software at 1-800-361-8324 for
information on purchasing upgrades.
Accessing the Parallel Port
Under Turing 4.0.3 and Classic Turing 7.2 and higher, it is possible to access
the IBM PC's parallel port for reading and writing. This is normally done
using the parallelput and parallelget commands. (In Turing 4.0,
you can use PC.ParallelPut and PC.ParallelGet to access ports
other than LPT1.)
It is strongly suggested that you update to Turing 4.0.3 before using Turing
to access the parallel port.
Under Windows 95/98 and Me, the operating system allows direct access to the
parallel port. Under Windows NT, 2000 and XP, access to the parallel port
is restricted by the operating system. In order to access the port under
Windows NT, 2000 and XP, it is necessary to install a device driver.
The device driver installer is the file dlportio_install.exe and is
located in the Support directory in the directory in which Turing was
installed. The device driver must be installed on each machine that will be
accessing the parallel port.
Lastly, before accessing the parallel port, check that the
parallel port is in normal mode and not in PS/2, EPP
or ECP mode. You can determine which mode the parallel port is in
using the Device Manager. In the list of devices in the Device Manager
window, double click Ports (COM and LPT), and then the
LPT port. This displays a property sheet about the parallel port.
Take a look at what it says about it. If it is in a non-original
mode (i.e. mentions PS/2, EPP or ECP mode),
then you will probably need to adjust the systems BIOS settings.
(Under Windows 2000 the Device Manager can be displayed by selecting the
System Control Panel from Settings in the Start menu.
Select the Hardware tab and then click the Device Manager
button.)
Changing the BIOS setting generally requires pressing certain keys when
the system is starting up to display the BIOS settings and then modifying
the settings. Once the BIOS settings are changed, TURN THE MACHINE OFF
FOR 10 SECONDS. (For some reason, restarting the machine is not always
sufficient to enact the port changes...)
More detailed instructions are found in the Turing on-line help.
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