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APPLE II DEVELOPMENT FORUM CONFERENCE LOG
September 5, 1989 10:00 pm Eastern Time
Topic: Programming on the Apple IIGS
Forum Leader: Dave Sugar (AFL Dyfet)
AFL Dyfet Okay, I guess we are ready to get started then...Good evening and
welcome to
AFL Dyfet the Apple II Development forum. Tonight's topic relates to
Toolbox programming
AFL Dyfet on the IIgs. We will be using PROTOCOL starting NOW. This means
that if you
AFL Dyfet wish to ask a question, you should enter a '?' on a line by
itself, and if you
Zith how does one go about setting up a heartbeat task header from c
AFL Dyfet wish to respond to what's currently being discussed, you should
enter a '!' on
AFL Dyfet a line by itself. You will all be called in turn, I guess
starting with
AFL Dyfet Zith :). GA Zith, you have the floor :)
Dave Lyons !
Dave Lyons I'll take that one...I've done it before. You need to declare a
structure that
Zith ok now I understand how to set up a task header from assembly but
how
Dave Lyons has the heartbeat task header fields in it, followed by a few
bytes of
Zith is one created from within C. Des orca c have a #pragma
command?
Dave Lyons code for "REP $30, JMP >yourfunction".
Dave Lyons As far as I know there's no #pragma for it, but doing it with a
structure
Dave Lyons is straightforward. I think we should put the answer in a folder
in the C
Dave Lyons folder of Let's Discuss for everyone's future reference (I
will).
Dave Lyons (ga)
AFL Dyfet That sounds like a good idea, Dave...Okay, our next question is
from AFA Parik,
AFL Dyfet GA...
AFA Parik Ok, how does QD II draw the pointer? Scan line, or vbl?
AFA Parik (when does it draw it)
AFA Parik ga
Dave Lyons !
AFL Dyfet GA Dave...
Dave Lyons It does it using scanline interrupts by default, but you can tell
it not to
Dave Lyons by using SetInts (I think that's the right name for the toolbox
call). In
Dave Lyons that case I'm not sure when it redraws--whenever is most
convenient for it. ga
AFL Dyfet Hmmm...we seem a little short on questions tonight :)
Dave Lyons (No, it's SetIntUse...yeah, that's the ticket.)
AFL Dyfet GA Coach, you have the floor now...
Coach101 Has anyone seen any "public" 5.0 tool box docs yet? Its almost
fall now!
Coach101 ga
Dave Lyons !
AFL Dyfet GA Dave...
Dave Lyons I wish I could give you a date...the wait is largely over, and
when you
Dave Lyons finally see the stuff I hope the quality makes it seem worth the
wait. I
Dave Lyons know I and others did a lot of reviewing to get things right.
ga
AFL Dyfet I know I can hardly wait myself :)...Well, I believe Windrider is
next, GA...
Coach101 Guess I will need to take the checkbook to AppleFest then....
thanks
Coach101 for tackling a *tough* and *touchy* question.....
Coach101 done
Windrider5 Does anyone know if you can write a custom SortList routine (List
Manager) in C
Dave Lyons !
AFL Dyfet GA Dave...(I swear I'm gonna make this a macro :)
AFA Gary J :)
Dave Lyons Very good question. The tricky bit is at the end, where you need
to return
Dave Lyons the result: A<B or B>A. The result needs to be in the Carry
flag, and I'm
Dave Lyons not sure whether APW C and/or ORCA/C generate "prolog" code at the
end of
Dave Lyons your function that happens to preserve the carry, or if it's lost.
If it's
Dave Lyons preserved, you could do inline { clc } in APW C, and whatever the
ORCA/C
Dave Lyons equivalent is.
Dave Lyons If not, you can write a small assembly-language "wrapper" around a
C function.
Dave Lyons ga
Windrider5 what's an inline {clc}
Dave Lyons "inline { clc }" and "inline { sec }" are how you can
AFL Dyfet Hmm...interesting...and a little tricky :). The inline function
allows you
Dave Lyons generate "clear the carry flag" and "set the carry flag"
instructions from
Dave Lyons APW C.
AFL Dyfet to imbedd machine code instructions into your program, as Dave is
explaining
AFL Dyfet within my explanation :)...GA Coach...
Coach101 The APW-C manual (in the section on calling/receiving) sequences
Coach101 has some interesting examples of how one could creatively use
the
Coach101 inline function. ga.
AFL Dyfet Side Note: Orca/C, from what I recall, uses the same calling
conventions as
AFL Dyfet Orca/Pascal.
AFL Dyfet That is, I believe the function does NOT clear out the stack frame
before
Coach101 That is correct Dave...
AFL Dyfet returning, so it may be possible to save the status flag on
exiting.
Coach101 Oops..... Apw-C has the caller clear the stack frame...
Coach101 Orca-C has the receiver clear the stack frame...
AFL Dyfet Did I get that backwards??
Coach101 At least thats the way I rememver it...
Dave Lyons !
AFL Dyfet GA Dave :)
Dave Lyons What do you guys mean by "clear out" the stack frame? Removing
the input
Dave Lyons parameters when the function returns?
Coach101 Yes
AFL Dyfet Yes, exactly, Dave...:)
Dave Lyons APW C: caller normally removes the input parameters, but you can
Dave Lyons declare it as "pascal", and APW C will have the function remove
them itself.
Dave Lyons (It can call both C and Pascal-style routines, as long as it knows
what
Dave Lyons it's calling.)
AFL Dyfet It's more common for the caller to clear the frame in C, since
variable
AFL Dyfet argument functions are supported, and, in theory, the called
routine may not
AFL Dyfet know what was passed to it. Most Pascal implimentations have the
called
AFL Dyfet routine clear the frame, since the number of arguments are fixed
and known at
AFL Dyfet compile time.
Dave Lyons Dang--before, when I said "inline", I meant "asm". (Duh.)
Coach101 Less crashes (without prototyping) if the caller clears the
frame...
Coach101 I knew that looked strange Dave....
Dave Lyons (Well, I *feel* strange, so it's okay.) BTW, I'd *rather* crash
when I'm
Dave Lyons passing the wrong # of parameters, & find out right away that way.
ga
AFL Dyfet Hmm...I guess that makes Orca/C a little non-traditional
:)...Well, I think we
AFL Dyfet have gone far beyond the bounds of the original question :).
AFL Dyfet Okay, I see that the next question is from Brin. GA Brin...
Brin Londo Can load font and print w/ QDII. Having trouble w/ 3rd party progs
(PWG)...
Brin Londo shoving font into FONTS.LIST file (is there a format for this
file. ga
Dave Lyons !
AFL Dyfet GA Dave...:)
Dave Lyons I don't understand the circumstances--are you adding a file to the
*:System:
Dave Lyons Fonts directory, or not? The only entity in the universe that has
the
Dave Lyons right to fiddle around with the Font.Lists file is the Font
Manager, and it's
Brin Londo Yes but 3rd party won't recognize and load.
Dave Lyons supposed to contain information about the fonts in that
directory.
Dave Lyons Did you create the Font file yourself, or did you get it from
somewhere? (In
Brin Londo Back to manual. Must have missed its reference in Font Manager
section
Dave Lyons other words, are you certain it's in the correct format. As
described in
Brin Londo used Beagle bros. font editor
Dave Lyons File Type Note $C8 (Font Files), there is a Pascal-string font
name tacked
Dave Lyons onto the beginning of the file.
Dave Lyons Oh, okay--if it's a Beagle-created font file, it ought to be
fine.
Dave Lyons Font.Lists is not mentioned in
Brin Londo I'll just have to re-read Font Manager section I guess. (shrug)
Dave Lyons the Addison-Wesley toolbox reference, since it wasn't around at
that time
Brin Londo Update?
Dave Lyons (it's mentioned in recent system software release notes).
Dave Lyons So, your 3rd-party software
Brin Londo Oh. where exactly (futile search) today
Dave Lyons doesn't see the font at all, not even in Choose Font dialogs?
Brin Londo no only fonts in Font.Lists file
Dave Lyons When you start up the Font Manager, it checks the
Dave Lyons Font.Lists file against all the font files actually present, and
if there
Dave Lyons are discrepencies, it *rebuilds* the Font.Lists file
automatically. You
Brin Londo 4.0 or 5.0?
Dave Lyons have to try pretty hard to trick it into not rebuilding the list
(copy over
Dave Lyons a file of the same name, without changing the modification or
create date/time,
Dave Lyons for example).
Dave Lyons System Software 4.0 release notes should talk about Font.Lists,
but there's
Dave Lyons nothing to know that I didn't just tell you.
Brin Londo No. I meant will 4.0 rebuild list?
Dave Lyons Yes--any version of the system software that contains a Font
Manager that
Dave Lyons cares about Font.Lists is smart enough to rebuild it. Older
versions of
Dave Lyons the Font Manager ignore Font.Lists completely, and no 3rd-party
application
Dave Lyons should know anything about Font.Lists at all.
Dave Lyons How are you copying the font into your Fonts directory?
Brin Londo Thanks (off to go strangle Activison programmer).
Brin Londo Finder 5.0
Dave Lyons A final note--
Dave Lyons if you still have probs, you can *try* throwing out the existing
Font.Lists
Dave Lyons file. That should *not* be necessary, but if you can't find any
other
Dave Lyons solution I'd be interested to hear what happens when you get rid
of it. ga
Brin Londo Interesting (If all you have is a hammer the world is a nail.)
Brin Londo If that works I'll get back to you. Nite all. ga.
AFL Dyfet Hmm, well, it's time to get that question Queue filled back up
again :)...
Coach101 Why is there air?
Dave Lyons Because there isn't no air.
AFL Dyfet Space that needs filling :)...
AFA Gary J Air is there to breath.
AFL Dyfet Well, don't breath up all the questions :)
AFL Dyfet GA JD, you have the floor now...
AFA Gary J (yeah! a question...I was almost out of breath..)
JDavies1 thanks, I need to know if there is any way to watch data going to
the disk,
JDavies1 I am having trouble saving data then restoring it. I wanted to see
what was or
JDavies1 wasn't going out.
Dave Lyons !
JDavies1 i'm done ....ga
Dave Lyons Would looking at the file produced be good enough? You could go
into
Dave Lyons BASIC.SYSTEm and BLOAD the thing (details on request), or DUMP the
thing with
Dave Lyons my favorite command shell (Davex), or with some other people's
favorite
Dave Lyons command shells.
JDavies1 Yes but it is MIDI data and I'm not sure what it exactly suppose
to be.. sounds
JDavies1 like I don't really know what I'm doing...well I'm real lazy!
Dave Lyons If you don't know what the data is supposed to be, how are you
going to know
Dave Lyons if it's right even if you can watch it on its way to the disk? :)
You're
Dave Lyons gonna have to figure out what it is that you're supposed to end up
with, before
JDavies1 Even to see what was saved was loaded.
Dave Lyons you can determine whether you're Writing it wrong or Reading it
wrong. ga
JDavies1 I just wanted to compare if what was going out was comming in
first..I guess I
JDavies1 could use a dummy window and compare the two after a save then
load..Does
Dave Lyons Okay, so have your program write some of the data to the screen
before you
Dave Lyons save it, and again after you read it back. No problem.
JDavies1 anyone know of a disk editor that works under GSOS?
Dave Lyons I use Block Warden. Doesn't work *under* GS/OS, but it doesn't
take very
Dave Lyons long these days to switch between GS/OS and ProDOS 8. Not long at
all.
AFL Dyfet That's a touchy subject :), since you cannot perform block
read/write calls to
Dave Lyons WHILE you're under GS/OS, you generally can't write any blocks
directly to
Dave Lyons your boot disk, since Sys.Resources is open.
Coach101 GS/OS Exerciser will work.... Not really a disk editor but it can
save
Coach101 the day
Dave Lyons (Dave, you can BLOCK_READ with no problem, all the time, to a
ProDOS disk.)
AFL Dyfet a volume device that has an open file...or as Dave said...:)
JDavies1 Well I need support for more than two hard disk paartitions
JDavies1 with like copy II+ bit editor
Dave Lyons I don't know of a GS/OS disk editor right now, but ECP16 should be
able
Dave Lyons to DUMP your file in hex with no problem.
AE PhilM Vulcan will allow up to 4 Prodos partitions :)
Coach101 DUMPOBJ under Apw will also do nice hex dumps...
Dave Lyons Yeah, what Coach said. I always forget that.
AFA Gary J Hmmm, I think there is something that someone uploaded in our
library that
AFA Gary J will do that too.. All it does is display the file in
hex...using a desk top
AFA Gary J window.
AFA Gary J (I don't recall the name, off hand)
JDavies1 I'll look for that program or use dumpobj, Thanks.
AE PhilM Dave, how about adding a bload to nifty list ??
Dave Lyons Very good idea. Nifty List will be getting modules Any Year Now,
so things
Dave Lyons like that will be easy to do, without penalizing people who want
to keep NL
AFA Gary J Yeah! :)
Dave Lyons small--they can ignore the modules they don't want.
Coach101 Great.... Interrupt queues module would nice....
Dave Lyons Eh? Interrupt queue?
AFA Gary J :)
Coach101 List the people who have registered for receipt of particular
interrupts
Dave Lyons Hmmm...interesting. Not sure if it can be done from an
outside-the-OS point
Dave Lyons of view, but I'll look into it.
Coach101 Ah, but your on the inside *NOW*
AFL Dyfet Okay, I believe our next question is from Doctor Why. You have
the floor now.
Doctor Why I was writing a desktop program in Orca/Pascal and was trying to
add some Print
Doctor Why Manager routines (for my first time). I was just inserting code to
display the
Doctor Why various dialogs. The PrChoosePrinter worked fine but
Doctor Why the PrStlDialog and PrJobDialog caused the system to crash.
Dave Lyons !
Doctor Why Any ideas?
AFL Dyfet GA Dave...
Dave Lyons Gee, it doesn't look like you're using 5.0 yet. (Under 5.0,
PrChoosePrinter
Dave Lyons puts up a dialog that says "Use the control panel instead,"
basically.)
Dave Lyons I don't know what's causing your crash, though. At what address
did it
Dave Lyons crash? Did it return from the toolbox call at all, or did it
crash while
Dave Lyons in there?
Doctor Why No, this was from a few weeks ago, and I don't have any specifics
here.
Dave Lyons Well...gee...ask a specific question, get a specific answer. :-)
Doctor Why I selected the Print option from menu and crashed.
AE PhilM !
Dave Lyons ga
AFL Dyfet GA Phil...
AE PhilM How did you get a print record? You need to pass those as input
to both
AE PhilM PrJob and PrStl
AE PhilM ga
Doctor Why I used PrDefault? was that right?
AE PhilM Sounds correct....humm...don't know.
Dave Lyons (flip, flip, flip....)
Dave Lyons No, PrDefault just
AE PhilM Did you pass a handle or a pointer to PrDefault?
Dave Lyons initializes a handle to be a nice default print record. You have
to allocate
Dave Lyons it yourself with NewHandle, apparently.
Doctor Why handle.
Dave Lyons Where did you get the handle, Doctor Why?
Dave Lyons (BTW, "A print record is 140 bytes long." TB Ref 1, page
15-19.)
Doctor Why I believe that I defined it myself.
Dave Lyons DW, when you say you "defined it yourself," do you mean you
declared it as
Dave Lyons a handle (as in Pascal: var xyz: Handle;), or that you actually
assigned
Dave Lyons it a value that came back from NewHandle?
Doctor Why handle := ^pointer
AE PhilM Did you get 140 bytes of space from the memory manager?
Dave Lyons Yes, a "handle" as a data type is a pointer to a pointer. The
particular
Dave Lyons handle you pass to PrDefault has to actually be a Memory Manager
handle,
Dave Lyons and it has to refer to a 140-byte block of memory.
Doctor Why You're testing my memory...I think so, but I'm not sure.
AE PhilM If you did not allocate enough room for your record...that could
certainly be
AE PhilM the cause of the crash...on the otherhand if PrDefault is actually
checking
AE PhilM the input to see if it is a memory manager handle...it would
probably return
Doctor Why That may be my problem. I don't remember if I used NewHandle
AE PhilM with some sort of error, but do no harm.
Dave Lyons PrDefault *probably* isn't checking to see that it's a valid
handle; in
Dave Lyons general, the toolbox assumes the application programmer is a
responsible
Dave Lyons entity and doesn't bother double-checking everything. It would
rather
Dave Lyons crash. (This is more efficient, except when your program isn't
working
Dave Lyons right--it increases debugging time in exchange for better
performance at
Dave Lyons run-time.)
Dave Lyons ga
AE PhilM :) Ahh....debugger toolbox in ROM's is what we need. Remember
the IIe
AFL Dyfet Do we have any more questions or comments for tonight?
AE PhilM debugger ROMS. done
A2GS ?
Dave Lyons Ack! No, we *don't* need additional versions of the toolbox
floating around--
AFL Dyfet Okay, Go ahead, A2GS...
Coach101 ? (though not toolbox)
Dave Lyons my life is complicated enough with ROM 1 and ROM 3. (Sorry!)
Doctor Why Thanks Dave (and Phil)
A2GS I want to use the Floating Point Algorithms or at least look at
them to adapt
A2GS them to 16-bit code (the ones currently used by Applesoft), Where
do I look?
Dave Lyons !
AFL Dyfet GA Dave...
A2GS Specifically I'm looking for DIV. and MULT. routines.
Dave Lyons Look in the Apple Numerics Manual, Second Edition, and at its
37-item
Dave Lyons bibliography. (Is that the sort of answer you're looking for?
Probably
Dave Lyons not, but I can't say "I'll send you SANE source," and I can't say
"Just
Dave Lyons disassemble the ROM," so I say "Find some good reference
material.") ga
AFL Dyfet :)...A number of magazines used to list entry points to the
Applesoft FP
AFL Dyfet routines :)...
AFL Dyfet GA Gary...
AFA Gary J Or...you can look right here on-line..
A2GS You wouldn't happen to know whether it's bank 00 or 01 (probably
00)
AFA Gary J in the reference library.
A2GS Where, where, where, where.....?
Dave Lyons (Whoops! I overlooked the reference to Applesoft in the question.
Sorry.)
AFA Gary J Just enter the words "AppleSoft and Internals" in the
Dave Lyons !
AFA Gary J search field, and there are a number of articles avaialble.
AFL Dyfet GA Dave...
AFA Gary J (or available, even :)
Dave Lyons From a running P8 program, Applesoft is in bank 0, but
Dave Lyons from the Monitor, when you're looking, it's bank $FF, since the
monitor
Dave Lyons always shows you language card space in bank 0. ga
AFA Gary J (Use keyword REFERENCE to get to the reference library)
A2GS SO an address pointing to let's say Exxx is actually calling
ff/Exxxx (right?)
A2GS FF/Exxx
AFL Dyfet Not exactly...bank $FF is really mapped into bank 0, and for all
intents and
Dave Lyons From *your* point of view, as a Monitor user, yes. From
Dave Lyons the 65816's point of view, no.
AFL Dyfet purposes looks like the IIe memory map, when the roms are enabled
:)
A2GS Thought so :), don't want to go nuts looking everywhere
else....Thanx :)
A2GS GA
Coach101 I wish to write some additional protocol stacks for use with
AppleTalk,
Coach101 How do I do this under 5.0. Is, or will, the necessary docs be
Coach101 available? ga
Dave Lyons Gee...doesn't anybody else want to take that questoin? :-)
Dave Lyons Or "...ion." I think the documentation is *mostly* already out
there, but
Dave Lyons there are almost certainly some gaps.
Dave Lyons I suggest dealing with Apple II DTS officially (Channel AppleLink,
MCI Mail,
Dave Lyons or U.S. Mail), with questions as specific as possible.
Dave Lyons (ga)
AFL Dyfet I'd love to see TCP/IP myself :)...then I could FTP to HDS unix or
other odd
AFL Dyfet things like that :)
Coach101 Drat, someday I will take the time to write up the Partner
app....
Coach101 Are the entry points that were documented for ProDos-16 still
valid?
Dave Lyons Coach, write in anyway. It can't hurt, and you'll probably
actually get
Dave Lyons an answer.
Coach101 TCP/Ip is what I have in mind Dyfet :)
Dave Lyons Yes, the P16 stuff is still valid.
AFL Dyfet With Telnet/rlogin support? What are you trying to hook up to,
Coach?
Coach101 24 II-GS, dozen or so Macs, several mainframes,.... All across
the
Coach101 continental US
Coach101 Oops, forgot the VAXs & IBM-PCs
AFL Dyfet Sounds like last winter, when we played 'the game' (cross country
Empire :)
Coach101 Project for NASA.....
AFA Gary J Sounds interesting...
AFL Dyfet Hmm...now that sounds like a fun project :)...
