🚀 go-pugleaf

In July of 1995, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Eiffel, ISE introduced
a free compiler, FREE EIFFEL FOR WINDOWS.

A new version is now available, at the same release level as ISE's commercial
offerings (version 3.3.9).

This new version is a significant improvement over the previous one and
corrects the bugs that were reported on comp.lang.eiffel; in particular,
run-time assertion violations are now correctly handled.

In addition, whereas the preceding version was for Windows 3.1 only
(Windows 95 had not yet been released at the time), the new one has
two variants: one for Windows 3.1, and another (32-bit) that will run
on both Windows 95 and Windows NT.

FREE EIFFEL FOR WINDOWS is a complete implementation of the Eiffel language,
with no limit on the size of the systems that you can compile. It comes
complete with more than 160 library classes in precompiled form
(EiffelBase for data structures and algorithms, EiffelLex for lexical
analysis, EiffelParse for parsing).

A number of important tools are included, for system browsing
(descendants, ancestors, descendant versions, clients, suppliers etc.),
documentation (short, flat-short...), generation of various
text processing formats (MML for FrameMaker, HTML, Microsoft's Rich Text
Format (RTF), troff, TEX, or in fact any format that users care to define)
etc. Basic on-line documentation is included, in particular an introduction
to Eiffel and a presentation of the environment.

The main difference with the commercial versions is that the environment
is textual, not graphical. In addition, the compiler, based like
all of ISE's compilers on our proprietary Melting Ice Technology,
only generates "melted" code (rather than C code), so that run-time
execution speed is 5 to 10 times slower than with the fully optimized
object code generated by the professional versions.

FREE EIFFEL FOR WINDOWS is not really appropriate for commercial
development, but provides an excellent and cost-free way to get familiar with
the concepts and basic tools of the Eiffel method and language.

The next level up is our Personal Eiffel for Windows, similar
to the free version but with the full graphical environment (EiffelBench)
and the graphical library (EiffelVision), still at $69.95 (US price -
for details see the price lists at http://www.eiffel.com). After
that come the professional versions for Windows (3.1/NT/95),
the low-cost and full-function Linux version, the Unix versions (all
platforms), the VMS version.

Although free, FREE EIFFEL FOR WINDOWS is a full-fledged ISE product,
not an obsolete earlier product. As noted above it is at the same
compiler level as the commercial versions. Technical support
and manuals in book form are available for a fee.

HOW TO OBTAIN THE FREE EIFFEL ENVIRONMENT
=========================================

Normally we recommend that people download FREE EIFFEL FOR WINDOWS
from the Eiffel archive at "SimTel, the Coast to Coast Software Repository (tm)"
(which we thank, by the way, for their hospitality). We have uploaded
the new version to SimTel but they haven't had the time to install it
yet. So please go to our home page

	http://www.eiffel.com

and follow the instructions there. You will be instructed to download
the version from ISE's own FTP site. In the future we will probably
change the instructions so that users are encouraged to use
SimTel or one of its many mirror sites. 

(I could have waited a few days for SimTel's acknowledgment, and
sent people directly there. We are eager, however, to make sure that
people start using the new version right away, rather than continue
to download the now obsolete version at SimTel, hence this early
announcement. We expect that ISE's new Internet connection will handle
the load; if you encounter any trouble please accept our apologies
and try again later; send comments about the connection to
<webmaster@eiffel.com.)

 	[If you have access to FTP but not the Web go to 
		ftp://ftp.eiffel.com/pub/windows
	We prefer, however, that you go through the Web address if
	you can, since it contains more detailed instructions.]

We look forward to welcoming all new users of FREE EIFFEL FOR WINDOWS
into the Eiffel community.

-- 
Bertrand Meyer, ISE Inc., Santa Barbara (California)
805-685-1006, fax 805-685-6869, <bertrand@eiffel.com> - ftp://ftp.eiffel.com
Web home page: http://www.eiffel.com

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