I like the sound of Dave's edit program as below, wouldn't it be nice
for us if Microchip expanded the official product along these lines ?

SGS Thomson now appear to have bought the software rights from Actum to
give us the "Realiser" (st62xx series only) at the price of CDROM only,
that's  great for "need the product yesterday" or uC newbie
applications, the weak point in most uC manufacturer's products that I
have seen is the assembler/editor.ie motorola's "IASM11"

Yeah, I know that higher level languages such as "C" exist, and can help
with time to market, but as many of you have discovered, RAM space and
speed are more friendly to low level assembly.

Many of us (well me anyway) use a P.C. at home for our R&D, a 14 or 15
inch moniter can show only a limited number of code lines. Filling these
up with movlw and movf sure makes it look like you've been busy, but I
prefer to condense with a macro and shunt this sort of thing off to the
list and hex files. As a general rule of thumb if I have to do a tedious
piece of code more than three times I will put it into a macro or a
subroutine.

Here some claims to fame/sales pitch from a few of our leading
suppliers:
Motorola advertise "CISC" (complex instruction set chip ?)
Microchip advertise "RISC", only 35 instructions etc(16cxx)
SGS Thomson advertise "universal core" (snail with Pic&Mix
pheripherals))
Atmel advertise "RISC with CISC features" (similiar to MPASM with
special instruction equivalents)
Scenix advertise "Virtual Pheripherals" (pre debugged? bit bangers)

I think that Microchip deliberatly downplay their "Special Instruction
Mnemonics" as a sales strategy. (conflicts with their "only 35
instructions to learn !") line.
This doesn't mean that we the sold, have to restrict ourselves to only
the awkward minimalist mnemonics.

In an open discussion forum such as the PICLIST I agree that the
exclusion of exotic instructions can make sharing and debugging of code
easier. This is assuming however, that we are not interested in training
ourselves to program more efficiently.

As the piclist's main subject matter is "MICROCHIP PICXXXXX"
microcontrolers and programming of them, perhaps we should check their
freeware MPLAB help files for information on MPASM assembly mnemonics ?
Those of you who have already done so will note the subject "SPECIAL
INSTRUCTION MNEMONICS" , listed on the left is the special mnemonic, on
the right is the "EQUIVALENT CODE" , please note: No cycle count is
specified here; this doesen't mean zero cycle time, simply check out the
cycle times for the component mnemonics making up a special instruction.

Personally I have a problem with "btfss STATUS,Z" (for example) : when
an operation is made affecting the status flags, and the result is zero,
I would expect to test for a clear (0) Z bit. It's not this way ! , Zero
result means Z bit in STATUS is SET.  Therefore, I prefer to use a
special instruction. Especially when doing maths calculations, I find
that the special instruction mnemonics give much better readability.
(and macros)

I like seeing macros and extended MPASM vocabulary code in my email, it
tells me that people are looking for a "best" solution.

regards all,
Graham Daniel

David Sorlien wrote:
>
> Steve Baldwin wrote:
>
> > > On these points, what do other people think?
>
> Microchip's pseudo-ops (documented in the MPASM.HLP file, appendix D) are huge
> time savers for me. When writing a large PIC application, it is a lot quicker
> to type:
>     skpz
> than it is to type:
>     btfss    STATUS,Z
>
> IMO, the source code becomes more readable when some pseudo opcodes are used.
I
> usually limit my use of these 'extra' instructions only when they expand to a
> single opcode. Timing calculation errors are easily avoided following this
> simple rule.
>
> I use Multiedit for writing PIC code. This source code editor is by far the
> best in its class. When configured properly, Multiedit provides syntax
> highlighting, configurable macro keys, a compiler program interface, automatic
> compiler error file parsing, fantastic search and replace functions... I could
> go on and on about how great this editor is. It's not cheap though - version 8
> cost me $129USD for the electronic download!
>
> Back to the topic: I have setup Multiedit to display all standard PIC opcodes
> in bold, compiler directives are displayed in bold text of a different color,
> and pseudo-opcodes are bold and in a third color. Provides immediate
> verification of proper spelling, and I can instantly locate which instuctions
> are not the 'standard' ones.
>
> If anyone has (or decides to get) Multiedit and needs the configuration info
> for PIC use, I would be happy to share. Oh yeah, I am not affiliated with
> American Cybernetics, just a satisfied user of their product. Check it out,
> there is a demo you can download at:
> http://www.multiedit.com/
>
> Dave Sorlien