The Second Edition of Blind Watchmaker, completed in 2015, aimed at producing a version of Blind Watchmaker that can be compiled under both THINK Pascal and Free Pascal.

Macintosh Toolbox

Pascal code for the Macintosh typically contains many calls to procedures and functions that are part of the classic Macintosh Toolbox, a programming library which provides an interface to the Macintosh operating system. These routines are foreign to the Free Pascal compiler. To support compilation, a dummy library of interface declarations and (in the case of toolbox functions actually used in Blind Watchmaker) stub implementations called RomanaII has been created to bridge this gap.

Nonstandard Features of THINK Pascal

Text Window

THINK Pascal was built on the earlier Lightspeed Pascal, which included a console-like text window which is not part of Macintosh Pascal. Blind Watchmaker uses this text window to display the genomes of Arthromorphs.

The Second Edition replaces uses of the text window with a new equivalent text window in pure Macintosh Pascal.

Floating Point String Formatting

THINK Pascal included functions for the attractive formatting of floating-point numbers to strings. The Second Edition replaces this functionality.