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APPLE II DEVELOPMENT FORUM CONFERENCE LOG
May 16, 1989 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time
Topic: Programming Shells and Environments
Forum Leader: Dave Sugar (AFL Dyfet)
AFA Gary J There's the banner....
Coach101 Good Evening everyone
AFL Dyfet Hi Coach!
Coach101 Dave, have you ever heard of "come from" programming
AFL Dyfet Yeah :)
AFL Dyfet Trying to debug some speghetti code?
Coach101 WIsh I had a copy of that article.... A good one... Right up
there with MUMPS
AFA Gary J :)
Coach101 :)
AFL Dyfet I don't recall what magazine it was in anymore...if I happen to
come across
Coach101 Did you ever figure out their final example?
AFL Dyfet it again, I will remember to get you a copy...
AFL Dyfet I really don't recall it anymore...:) It's the sort of thing that
haunts
AFL Dyfet programmers nightmares...
Coach101 I particularly enjoyed the "assigned comefrom"
AFL Dyfet Hi Marty, a true ADV loyalist? Or mt on a Mac :)
AFL Marty Mac?
AFL Marty No Macs here.... I shot them all.
AFL Dyfet :)
AFL Jack Just Big Macs, huh Marty? :)
AFL Marty Only at the golden arches :)
AFA Gary J Hi Dave
Dave Lyons Hello Dave.
AFL Dyfet :)
Coach101 Gees.... Matt's got him talking to himself....
AFA Gary J :)
AFL Dyfet Yes, I guess we will get down to business shortly :)
JSchober What's the topic tonight??
AFA Gary J Programming Shells and Environments...
AFL Dyfet We were going to have a surprise guest tonight, but he's not
online yet, so I
AFL Dyfet guess we will start now:
AFL Marty That must be the surprise :)
JSchober :)
AFL Dyfet Good evening and welcome to the tuesday night Apple Development
AFL Dyfet Forum chat. Tonight's topic, as I have been reminded, is
Programming Shells
AFL Dyfet and Environments (APW, Orca, ECP, etc). We will be using PROTOCOL
starting
AFL Dyfet now. This means that if you wish to ask a question, you must
enter a '?'
AFL Dyfet on a line by itself, and if you wish to comment on the current
Matt DTS ?
AFL Dyfet question being asked, you must enter a '!' on a line by itself. I
will
AFL Dyfet call you each in turn to speak, starting with Matt, who seems to
have the
AFL Dyfet first question. GA Matt :)
Matt DTS Who's the mystery guest? :-)
Dan Burton <- Doug Davies
AFL Dyfet One of the people involved with SSSi, the company that will be
introducing
AFL Dyfet the Genesys resource management tools. Unfortunately he's not
online...
AFL Dyfet For those unfamiliar, Genesys is/will be a product that will allow
you to
AFL Dyfet create/edit/manipulate System 5.0 resources in a friendly and easy
manner.
AFA Parik ?
AFL Dyfet I guess we can move on to the next questions. GA Parik.
AFA Parik is the demo up?
AFA Parik ga (i hate this :)
AFA Gary J !
AFA Gary J No :)
AFL Dyfet No, not that I am aware of, Parik. Okay, GA Gary.
AFL Dyfet Oh, strange timing there :)
AFA Gary J (sorry :)
AFA Parik pre-GAing...GAing before his time?
AFL Dyfet Okay, the floors open to questions.
Coach101 ?
AFL Dyfet Okay Coach, GA.
AFA Gary J Q = Coach
Coach101 From a curiousity viewpoint, what shell do the people here use?
JSchober !
AFL Dyfet GA Joe.
Dave Lyons Davex.
AFL Dyfet Of course, Dave :)
Coach101 I must have missed out on the cocktails :)
DwightW1 apw's shell
AFL Marty <-- Orca
AFL Scott Davex, and Orca.
CompuWizA Merlin 16+
Beta Boop Orca
AFA Gary J Orca
AFA Parik <-- Orca/M v1.1b :)
AFL Dyfet Incidently, I use Command.COM, Orca, and Nautalus/GS.
AFA Parik ?
AFA Gary J Q = Coach, Parik
AFL Dyfet I think everyone's gotten a chance to get a reply in :). GA
Parik.
Coach101 APW.... THanks for the information.... Just curious... APW's
following
AFA Parik (obvious) whats Nautilus GS?
Coach101 is rather light! GA
AFL Dyfet I knew someone would ask that :). (No, I didn't pay him :).
Nautalus is a
AFL Dyfet project we're working on over here. The PC :( version will
probably be out
AFL Dyfet before the GS one, though.
AFA Parik whats it do.
AFL Dyfet Well, it's a shell environment (was once known as CMD/16), it has
lots of nifty
AFL Dyfet utilities, it follows the APW standard, and it has a module called
'pilot'
AFL Dyfet which is a visual front end. It's basically the 16 bit version of
Command.COM,
AFL Dyfet and it's been in development off and on for some time now, as some
people here
AFL Dyfet can tell you :)
JSchober :)
AFA Parik does it have a fast assembler/linker? :)
AFL Dyfet No, although it has some nifty communications utilities and MANY
disk/file
AFL Dyfet utilities.
AFA Parik release date
AFA Parik (is anyone alive?)
AFL Dyfet Well, the PC version is actually in early beta. The GS version is
sorta
AFL Dyfet lounging around waiting for me to have enough time to finish it up
:).
AFL Dyfet As to release dates for either, I never give out release dates
until the manual
AFA Parik we need hyperram
AFA Gary J :)
AFL Dyfet is typeset :).
AFL Dyfet Any more comments on Nautalus, or are there any more questions
waiting to be
AFA Parik does anyone here use fastext and a TWGS?
AFL Dyfet asked?
JSchober (Well, I've got a question, but not about shells... :)
AFL Scott Yep, Parik, I do.
AFA Parik does it crash if you leave it on a looong time sitting in orca?
Beta Boop (fastext?)
AFA Parik (ga with any other questions, I can take it up with Scott :)
AFL Scott No, not here....
JSchober (Doubles the speed of the Text Toolset)
AFL Dyfet Okay, Joe, I'm sure we can do a change for your question. GA
Joe.
JSchober :) Ok, I've got a pair of buffers -- one is a dynamic buffer that
contains raw
JSchober $C0 image data, and the other is a 64K buffer to use for
unpacking... I set up
JSchober all the parameters for UnpackBytes, but ... err... it SOMETIMES
(and I haven't
JSchober figured out when it does and doesn't) unpack the full range of
specified bytes.
JSchober Any limits to that tool call?? (Ok, ok, so LAUGH at the Q...)
GA.
AFA Parik !
AFL Marty <-- laughing uncontrollably :)
AFL Dyfet GA Parik.
AFA Gary J :)
AFA Parik only 64k max at a time can be unpacked. you can loop it
continually for ease.
JSchober Not trying to do MORE than 64K, tho...
Dave Lyons !
AFL Dyfet GA Dave.
Dave Lyons Post your question in Let's Discuss somewhere, & I'll answer it
tomorrowish--I am already planning
AFL Scott (Dave is on a Mac.. :()
Dave Lyons to gain a complete understanding of PackBytes and UnpackBytes very
soon anyway. ga
AFL Scott :)
JSchober :) Ok, I'll do that... thanks. Funny thing is ... sometimes
it'll unpack,
JSchober sometimes it won't, even on the same size of (source) data... ah
well.
AFA Parik any errors coming back? make sure your pointers are setup
right!
JSchober Well, they are; I get a partial unpack. The result (PLA'd) just
isn't the same
Dave Lyons (Be sure not to use actual memory manager handles for PackBytes or
UnpackBytes.)
JSchober as the destination buffer... whatcha mean, Dave?
Dave Lyons The toolbox ref says to pass a pointer to a pointer; this is
correct. But
Dave Lyons the stack diagram uses the term "handle"; if you actually pass a
handle,
Dave Lyons you will fry the memory manager, since [Un]PackBytes will modify
the pointer that
Dave Lyons is being pointed to. This would consufe the memory mgr
completely.
Coach101 Cute :)
JSchober Hmmmm. So move the handle elsewhere, first?? Ok, I'll try
it...
AFL Dyfet Well, just the pointer in the handle, Joe :)
Dave Lyons !
AFL Dyfet GA Dave.
JSchober Well... gee, yeah, Dave. :)
Dave Lyons Just keep your own pointer to the memory--don't pass the handle
that NewHandle
Dave Lyons returned to you. It's perfectly okay to have the data IN a
handle, just as long
Dave Lyons as you don't pass the address of the master pointer.
Dave Lyons (ga)
JSchober Ok, I got ya'. I =was= using the handle returned by NewHandle...
maybe that's
JSchober it! If it doesn't help, I'll post that message... :)
Dave Lyons Eek! Eek!
JSchober :)
AFL Dyfet Looking at the docs, I probably would have made the same
mistake.
JSchober (Oh, I'm done... :)
AFA Parik !
AFL Dyfet We need to fill that queue :). GA Parik.
AFA Parik If Apple would make a super-duper graphic compression routine, it
would be
AFA Parik REALLLLLLLLLLLY nice. *hint* :) ga
JSchober !
AFL Dyfet GA Joe.
JSchober Err... not having the 3.2+ toolbox updates, what makes the ACE
compression
JSchober scheme "fuzzy"?? GA
AFL Dyfet (See, I just knew this was toolkit night :)
JSchober LOL
AFA Gary J :)
Coach101 :)
AFA Parik !
AFL Dyfet GA Parik.
AFA Parik from my simple understandings, it doesn't reconstruct the data
exactly, based
JSchober <while everyone is smiling at each other, Parik takes ACTION...
whatta guy!> :)
AFA Parik on the ups an downs (sine waves I guess, no tans for me :) it
compacts the
AFA Parik data, so its sorta changed. I dunno, maybe the peak would be
changed, maybe th
AFA Parik bottom of the wave, who knows... its barely noticeable even with
voice sampling
AFA Parik esp at higher rates. ga
AFA Parik (and the routines are SMALL! WOW! like a couple of blocks total
for the tool)
AFL Dyfet Okay, it's time to get that question queue filled (gads, I feel
like Jerry
AFL Dyfet hustling for the kids).
Beta Boop ?
JSchober :)
AFL Dyfet GA Beta.
AFA Parik heh...daves kids
Coach101 We told you not to start without Hyper
Beta Boop Stupid question time. I'm just learning Orca/Pascal
Dave Lyons About 6 blocks.
AFA Gary J (No such thing..)
Beta Boop How do I get from a Pointer to the Pointee?
AFA Parik (Hi Windrider)
Dave Lyons !
Dave Lyons Ummm...in TML Pascal you put an "@" in front of a procedure,
function,
Dave Lyons or variable to get a pointer to it. Anybody know if ORCA works
AFL Dyfet I'm not too familiar with Pascal myself, being a 'C' person :).
GA Dave.
Dave Lyons the same way? I think it does.
Beta Boop No, I mean that I have the pointer, and want to get to the
record.
Coach101 I think you have the question reversed Dave :)
Dave Lyons Oh, okay. I *do* have the question reversed. Sorry!
Dave Lyons The real one is easier anyway. You put a "^" after a pointer to
get the object
Dave Lyons it points to.
Dave Lyons (Easier because it's standard Pascal.)
Beta Boop Oh, it's that easy? Thanks.
AFL Floyd (Orca does use the '@' as an address operator though)
Beta Boop I did my part to fill the queue....GA
JSchober (hey Bo... :)
AFL Dyfet Okay, we need to meet our quota on questions here tonight. Maybe
we will being
Montag4 (hey all... :)
AFL Marty ?
AFL Dyfet (bring) Vana down for an appearence if it help's get that queue
filled :).
Coach101 ?
AFL Dyfet Seriously, GA Marty.
AFL Marty Tell me about Genesys, please.
AFL Dyfet I wish I could, unfortunately, I'm not too familiar with the
product, and the
AFL Marty Specifically, how does it differ from DLU?
AFL Floyd !
AFL Marty (and Design Master)
AFL Dyfet person I was hoping to bring online to describe it isn't. As to
how it differs
AFL Dyfet from DLU, that's easy. It goes lightyears beyond. It can not
only allow you
JSchober ?
AFL Dyfet to create dialog boxes and OTHER resource usable items for system
5.0, it can
AFL Dyfet also genorate rezcomp scripts from EXISTING resources, edit
resources in apps,
AFL Dyfet etc. It may be able to do a lot more, I just don't know off-hand
myself. GA
AFL Dyfet Floyd.
AFL Floyd I was just going to say to forget about DLU, and the author of
Design Master is planning on adding
AFL Marty When will I see it online?
Beta Boop !
AFL Floyd resource support before too long. Dave, do you have the Genesys
demo in your library? I could
AFL Floyd upload it if you don't. ga
Matt DTS (I suppose "rezcomp" is vaguely related to the Rez compiler...)
AFL Dyfet I have heard there is a demo available, and we will try to get it
direct, or,
AFL Dyfet with the help of Floyd, it seems :). Thanks, Floyd.
AFL Marty (I don't understand the term, so it must be vague :)
AFL Floyd Okay. You're probably better off getting it direct, but let me
know.
AFL Floyd ga
AFL Marty Done
Beta Boop Genesys will create code for menus,
windows,dialogs,alerts,controls,icons,&
Beta Boop cursors. So the flysheet says.
Beta Boop GA
AFL Floyd !
AFL Dyfet I believe Coach is next. GA Coach.
Coach101 Does anyone know a way to "drive" the APW editor from an EXEC
file?
AFL Dyfet Shades of 'sed' :)
Coach101 (:
AFL Scott (Don't we wish!)
Coach101 I thought so.... Drat....
A GibberFC drat....what ???? :)
AFL Dyfet I believe the next person on the floor should be Floyd, who I
accidently
AFL Dyfet skipped. GA Floyd.
AFL Floyd It will interesting to compare Design Master to Genesys as Design
Master is a fraction of the cost.
AFL Floyd Design Master is $30 I believe and Genesys is what? $125?
AFL Floyd ga (No problem, Dave) ;)
AFL Dyfet I have not heard about Design Master myself, though I agree this
would be
AFL Marty ?
AFL Floyd (Well, I'll upload the Design Master demo then)
AFL Dyfet interesting, once we have real products to compare :). I believe
the next
AFL Marty ::checking::
AFL Dyfet question is from Joe, GA Joe. (and thanks again Floyd!)
JSchober Ok... while we (were) on the topic of DLU, etc., does anyone know
what the most
JSchober recent version of it (DLU) is?? I've got 3.0, which is really
nifty, excepppt
JSchober it wants to give me families on check boxes, and no families on
radio buttons.
JSchober Errrr... "oops." GA...
AFL Dyfet Okay, I believe Marty's question is next then, GA MARtY :)
JSchober Gee, thanks... :)
AFA Gary J :)
AFL Marty Is the Design Master demo available online?
AFL Dyfet I believe Floyd indicated it would be shortly, Marty.
AFL Marty I have an older one but I understand a newer version is
available.
AFL Marty Oh... thanks
AFL Marty done
AFL Floyd (I'll upload the newer one tonight)
AFA Gary J BTW: The March and May technotes are coming on-line tonight and
tomorrow.
AFA Gary J Some are already up.
AFL Marty Is there some reason why the technotes take so long to get here?
Matt DTS There hasn't been an April release of AII TNs since 1986 or so.
Apple II TNs are in January, March...
AFL Marty I'm referring to the March technotes.
Matt DTS ...May, July, Sept. and Dec. Mac notes are in Feburary, April,
June, August, October and Nov.
Matt DTS They take so long because they have to be translated to text files
by hand, with diagrams.
Bill267 Is Uniforth a pretty good assembler or what do you reccommend...
AFL Marty Ummmmm.... why don't you do them as text files to begin with?
AFL Scott Marty, they write them on Macs... the printed versions are really
nice, tho..
AFL Marty I know Scott... but if I were writing them with the knowledge that
they would
AFL Scott so, it's worth it!
AFL Marty be translated later on, I'd be more inclined to do them in text
format.
AFL Marty The Mac _can_ do text files, can't it?
AFA Gary J Yes, it would seem like the way to go, Marty.
AFL Scott I do like the work that Matt has put in on them. Jim helped
translate them to
AFL Marty I don't doubt that a lot of work went into them.
AFL Marty I'd just like to see the tech notes posted during the month they
were written.
PElseth Oooh. All AFLs here. Is this a private mtg?
AFL Scott Problem with that is that Apple has to do the translation, right,
Dave?
AFL Marty That explains it then.
AFL Scott And Apple has allocated only one person to do that, right?
AFL Marty They probably have to form a committee to get it done.
AFL Marty :)
AFA Gary J Marty: The May ones are being posted in May :)
AFL Marty (so are the March ones :)
AFL Scott (Jim volunteered to help out... or so I've been told, again)
AFL Dyfet Okay, listen up everyone:
AFL Dyfet The special guest I had mentioned that may be stopping by just
did, a little
AFL Dyfet late :).
AFL Marty This is he?
AFL Cheryl hi Mike :)
Hackz Hi, Hackz - creator of Genesys!!!
AFL Dyfet Go ahead and introduce yourself, Michael. I believe Marty, at
least was
AFL Dyfet interested in hearing more about Genesys all evening :)
Hackz What do you want to know
AFL Marty Everything
AFL Dyfet :)
AFL Marty But I'll settle for the difference between Genesys and Design
Master.
Hackz OK, Genesys is a Resource creator/editor that works in a full
blown graphic
Hackz environment. It generates the actual resource fork and Pascal, c,
basic
Hackz and assembly source code for you.
Hackz It also does tool startup (proper order) and creates a "shell"
that you can
Hackz run and try out your menus windows, etc.
Hackz any thing else?
AFL Marty That sounds pretty impressive.
AFL Marty Do you have a demo version available?
Hackz I have not seen design master, But I can say that nothing like
Genesys
Hackz is available anywhere (I know, "what about AppMaker and
Prototyper?"
AFL Marty (I've never heard of AppMaker and Prototyper)
Hackz Genesys is literally "What you see is what you get" for
programmers.
AFL Cheryl Mike, isn't Prototyper for the Mac??
Hackz They are Mac (gag gag choke) programs.
AFL Marty Ack
AFL Dyfet Believe it or not, some of us DON'T use Mac's AT ALL here :)
AFL Marty Demo version... is one available?
AFL Cheryl don't go "ack" around me.....I am a Mac person!!!:)
AFL Marty (i know... ACK)
Hackz When you create a menu bar/menus in Genesys you get a blank menu
bar
Hackz at the top of your screen that you literally start typing the Menu
titles in!!
AFL Cheryl same to you, Marty :)
Hackz The Genesys demo is a graphics slide show animation sequence and
may
Hackz be available here now?? It is available on the Source, Compuserve
and Genie!!
AFA Gary J No, not here yet.
AFL Dyfet We don't have it yet :).
Hackz Oh, Get With IT..
AFA Gary J We need it!
Hackz I gave copies to Vince Cooper who I believe was going to upload
it??
AFA Gary J Hmmm. We'll have to send fan mail to Vince :)
AFL Marty (ALL of us :)
AFL Dyfet Vince isn't online at the moment...um, I believe Floyd has a demo
copy ready
AFL Dyfet to upload also :)
Hackz Any other questions about Genesys, resources or THE WORLD IN
GENERAL?
AFL Marty Price?
AFL Dyfet Shipping date planned?
Hackz It will list for $125.00 but probably sell for around $89
AFL Marty Special deal for AFLs and AFAs :)
Hackz What did you have in mind??
AFA Gary J :)
AFL Marty I was just kidding.
AFL Marty The :) at the end is a smile.
AFL Cheryl no he wasn't :)
AFA Gary J No you weren't :)
AFL Marty I gotta get rid of this "pick on me" sign here :)
AFA Gary J heheh
Hackz Oh, I'm new on this planet I didn't understand the iconisms :)
AFL Marty The $89 figure you quoted... that's the likely mail order price?
Hackz yup yes right uh huh
AFL Marty Thanks for all the info. Sounds like a very powerful utility.
Hackz Any hard questions or easy comments :)
Hackz Actually Genesys is planned to expand into more than a "utility"
AFL Dyfet Well, unfortunately, the 'tuff' crowd left earlier...:)
AFL Marty Goodnight all... gotta go tend my forum.
AFL Dyfet Okay Marty, goodnight.
