II.1.5 Running ASEM-51 in the Borland-IDE

Turbo C++ (1.0 thru 3.0) users will appreciate the possibility to invoke ASEM-51 as a transfer program from the Borland IDE. (DOS versions only!)
For this, the filter program ASEM2MSG for the ASEM-51 error messages has been provided. To integrate ASEM-51 into the Borland IDE, perform the following steps:

• Be sure that ASEM-51 has been installed properly as described before, or that ASEM.EXE and ASEM2MSG.EXE are somewhere in your PATH.
• Start the Turbo C++ (or Borland C++) IDE for DOS.
• For Turbo C++ 1.0, first click:    Options | Full menus | ON
• Click from the menu bar:    Options | Transfer
• When the “Transfer” dialog box is active, press the Edit button.
• Now the “Modify/New Transfer Item” dialog box should be active.
  Fill in the following items:

  Program Title:   ASEM-~51
  Program Path:    ASEM
  Command Line:    $NOSWAP $SAVE CUR $CAP MSG(ASEM2MSG) $EDNAME /C
  Translator:      [X]
  Hot key:         Shift F8
  

  Then press the New button.
• When returned to the “Transfer” dialog box, press the OK button.
• Click from the menu bar:    Options | Save | OK

Now it should be possible, to assemble the file in the active edit window with ASEM-51, when pressing Shift-F8. The error messages (if any) should appear in the “Message” window. You can browse through the errors, and jump into the source text by simply pressing Enter. This even works, if the error is not in the program itself, but in an include file!

Turbo-Pascal 7.0 users can also employ their Borland IDE for assembly. To integrate ASEM-51 into the Turbo-Pascal IDE, perform the following steps:

• Be sure that ASEM-51 has been installed properly as described before, or that ASEM.EXE and ASEM2MSG.EXE are somewhere in your PATH.
• Start the Turbo-Pascal 7.0 (or Borland-Pascal 7.0) IDE for DOS.
• Click from the menu bar:    Options | Tools
• When the “Tools” dialog box is active, press the New button.
• Now the “Modify/New Tool” dialog box should be active.
  Fill in the following items:

  Title:           ASEM-~5~1
  Program path:    ASEM
  Command line:    $NOSWAP $SAVE CUR $CAP MSG(ASEM2MSG) $EDNAME
  Hot keys:        Shift+F8
  

  Then press the OK button.
• When returned to the “Tools” dialog box, press the OK button.
• Click from the menu bar:    Options | Environment | Preferences
• When the “Preferences” dialog box is active, disable the “Close on go to source” item in the “Options” checkbox. Then press the OK button.
• Finally click from the menu bar:    Options | Save

Now ASEM-51 can be invoked with Shift-F8, to assemble the program in the active edit window, while error messages (if any) appear in the “Messages” window.

Users of both Turbo C++ and Turbo-Pascal should prefer the Turbo C++ IDE. In the Turbo-Pascal 7.0 IDE, the /COLUMNS (or /C) option has no effect! Turbo-Pascal versions prior to 7.0 didn't implement the Tools menu.

Note that the transfer macro $SAVE CUR saves the contents of the active edit window (if modified), before ASEM.EXE is invoked! If your assembler program includes further source files (which may be currently loaded into other edit windows), better specify $SAVE ALL. This will save the contents of all (modified) edit windows to disk files, before invoking ASEM.EXE! If you are not sure, specify $SAVE PROMPT. This will prompt you for every (modified) edit window to save the contents before running ASEM.EXE. For further information on transfer macros, refer to the Borland online help!

Important:   ASEM2MSG.EXE is not suitable for Win32 versions of the Borland IDE!