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| Author | Idea: A dev corner on System 7 Today? (Read 32369 times) | ||||||||||||||
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Bolkonskij
Administrator 1024 MB  Posts: 2023 
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on: February 27, 2021, 15:12
There's this particular idea that Knezzen and me have been talking a lot about. What we'd love to see is some more activity and publicity in development for System 7. There's still some stuff being done, but it has been some time since we last saw a new WorldBuilder game or a helpful little extension. So we've thought about a new section on the page that covers the developing for System 7 aspect. Some of our ideas are in the poll up there. Knezzen had the idea of an orphaned projects corner. A selection of cool but abandoned System 7 software projects whose source code is available. Any Mac OS developer could pick up stuff and continue development. The page would serve as the place that connects both. A simple and fast html-only version of Inside Macintosh for looking up toolbox functions while coding is something high up on my list (and probably most people, who tried to write some actual code for Mac OS). But that is tons of work and I'm not sure if Knezzen and me could do it alone. I remember that Jatoba had plans in that regard, though not System 7 exclusive. Any news, Jatoba? Then there's also the part where we could gather ideas for development. I bet you've ran into threads somewhere like "I want to develop something, just no idea what is needed" which do a great job shying away devs with smart answers like "a modern browser". The idea is really intermediate level projects to hone skills and yet provide folks with meaningful stuff. A small game, a converter for something. Think in that direction. I'm pretty sure there's other stuff there as well that might be useful. Any ideas / feedback is welcome! |
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Last Edit: February 27, 2021, 15:14 by Bolkonskij
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cballero
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1024 MB  Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #1 on: February 27, 2021, 17:54
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I love the idea!!! I gave up on programming almost from jump-street, especially with zero youtube or other visual teaching aides, and I think that's one barrier that can be breached using sites like Cornica.org to record short lessons in the most efficient programming Classic and programs in any other OS like Mac OS or even Windows/Linux if such things even exist (which I highly doubt, but you just never know lol). As far as another idea, which I voted on, would be to take existing software and hacking it for today's use. For example, AOL's AIM software was ripe for the re-purposing for IMing, but I was even more ambitious with what could be done: how about taking AOL's own software, that can use any broadband connection just like most Internet programs, and incorporating some of its elements: built-in email, instant messaging, news and other sections like forums and software download sections. It could even be re-branded to be a Classic Mac-centric platform. But again, aside from the amazing concept of giving it new life, it's all the elemental programming modifications to get all the ins and outs working that make it less trivial in execution. Tricking out the AIM program, for example, could allow for email and IMing to be done with the Garden's resources or somehow modify the program so its IM can use IRC chat. I know AIM use to have a picture and file sending capability similar to a simple peer-to-peer file-sharing tool, which would be an amazing capability to bring back to the Classic Mac platform somehow. The ultimate 'holy grail' in my book: would be to somehow combine webdav with the Classic Mac's folder sharing feature! Since webdav is still available from many cloud-based services, this would create something similar to Dropbox. Goliath is the only tool I know that can even access webdav, but extending its capabilities to include the ability to create an offline copies of folders to sync files seems like a cool idea. I just don't know how practical it would be in practice/the real world, ie, file corruption issues, limit of file types supported by webdav; although I imagine it's similar to having compressed and web-safe file formats that don't use the Mac's file forks. But customizing AOL's software may be far too audacious a goal. But how about reworking smaller programs in a similar way? Where there's a well, a a team of willing and able programmers, there should be a way! 
Last Edit: February 27, 2021, 18:41 by cballero
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #2 on: February 28, 2021, 11:50
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Sure, (resource) hacking older apps counts toward it as well. As for the other ideas, they sound interesting. When can we expect first versions from you? :-D As a first step our new Development forums is opening up today 
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grai
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1 MB Posts: 1 System 7 Newcomer!
Reply #3 on: March 09, 2021, 22:35
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Quote from: Bolkonskij html-only version of Inside Macintosh What's your opinion of THINK Reference[1] and Apple's Toolbox Assistant[2]? I think you can use them for context-sensitive help in MPW and maybe other IDEs. ObiWan[3] seems to only show function signatures. But maybe I didn't use it right. Personally I'm quite happy with my paper copies, so I'm just being a busybody. But I like looking at and talking about tools from that era even if I don't use them. :-) [1]: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/symantec-c-86 [2]: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/apple-developer-connection-1996 (the September Reference Library disc) [3]: https://www.gryphel.com/c/sw/progtool/obiwan/index.html Screenshots: http://images.macintosh.garden/2021/03/09/toolbox-reference.png
Last Edit: March 09, 2021, 22:39 by grai
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