>         Unfortunately, MPASM can't deal with macros that aren't
>         fixed-length.  Fortunately, however, Microchip now include a
>         separate linker with their dev tools, so if you're one of
>         those people who use MPLINK, you can go ahead and write all
>         the varying-length macros that you want.

Everyone should be using the linker.  Talking about absolute mode here is
just a waste of bandwidth and does a disservice to newbies who might get
the impression it is a reasonable option.  Unfortunately many Microchip
examples still use the archaic absolute mode, which gives the impression
that it's the preferred way to use MPLAB.  It's not.  Relocatable mode
allows you to write much cleaner software, takes about the same effort to
learn, but makes writing the code easier and less error prone.

This issue only comes up because there is an absolute mode, which is there
for historic reasons.  Relocatable code using a linker is the normal way
to do software development in general.  Nobody complains that all Windows
development uses relocatable objects.  It's just the way it's done.
Microchip would do a big service if they supported absolute mode only with
a special -OLD command line option and said it was not recommended for new
designs.

I know I've probably offended some people that still cling to absolute
mode because relocatable mode is "too hard to learn".  Usually this means
they haven't really looked at it and are using absolute mode from long ago
and feel threatened by the "new" stuff.  In reality, all instructions are
the same, and most directives too.  Some directives have different names
(CODE instead of ORG), but work pretty much the same way.  Then there are
things that make relocatable mode easier to write, like separate modules
each with its own namespace, properly working macros (I didn't know about
the fixed size limitation before), no page boundaries within a module, and
no more manually trying to fit various routines into specific pages.  All
in all, relocatable mode is clearly better and a little easier than
absolute mode.


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