I'm just now evaluating the latest Keil c51 tool. In the past, I've used c compilers for other embedded platforms. Many of these other platforms not only provided a good compiler, but provided great code "examples" and libraries. For instance, a already coded character LCD "library". So far with the evaluation of Keil, I've noticed rather minimal library support. And the examples that I looked at didn't look like they would be very helpful to me. I've got a couple questions: 1) Does a purchased version contain additional libraries that the evaluation version does not? Any extra stuff that would speed up the process of coding basic interface libraries common to most embedded systems (i2c, lcd, keypad, etc)? 2) How is the documentation on the compiler\tools? Thorough and easy to get up to speed on? Thanks John Yemos
All the manuals are included in PDF when you install the product - even the evaluation. They can be accessed directly from the 'Books' window in the uVision IDE. When you buy, you get printed manuals too. For library functions, just click on the function name in your source, then press F1 - the online help for that function will appear. Unfortunately, there is no similar facility for the C51 extended keywords :-( For error messages, just click on the message in the build Output window and press F1 - documentation for the message will appear. Unfortunately, as I've mentioned before, Keil have really missed an opportunity with this one: the additional help is often no more than just a restatement the original message text, and many of the newer messages are just not covered at all. :-(