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                             Product Directions

DICE is targeted at the general Amiga programmer with a  typical
machine. It will run effectively a low-end Amiga 500 with only 1
megabyte of memory and two floppy drives, while at the same time it
will take advantage of everything an Amiga  with a 68040 processor
and AGA chipset can throw at it.  We will continue to address the
low-end machine as the base environment while enhancing the
performance of the compiler and increasing the number of features
available.

You can expect to see continued improvements in code generation
quality, more features in the debugger, more libraries, and more
examples.  DICE will continue to evolve in step with the future
directions that Amiga International is taking the Amiga product
line. If you see something that is needed, let us know.

DICE was written with several goals in mind:

o Reasonably fast compilation.  Modular executables for ease of use,
  reliability, and testability.

o Tight, productive integration between modules using open standards,
  such as Amiga AREXX, to allow for custom environments and free
  choice of tools.

o Provide optimization  but not at the expense of reliability. DICE
  does no common sub-expression or loop unrolling optimization, but
  does do smart automatic register allocation, switch() optimizations
  and has multi-level history to propagate conditional expressions.

o Provide comprehensive support of the Amiga, especially for new
  versions of the OS that come out.  DICE fully supports 1.3, 2.x and
  3.x with an easy extension mechanism to allow development on
  several OS versions /betas simultaneously.

o Provide source code where appropriate so modifications or fixes can
  be easily made. DICE includes full source for its support libraries
  (c.lib, m.lib, auto.lib) and a means to remake the libraries.  DICE
  also includes full source to most of its own utilities to allow
  users to make enhancements.