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| Author | 68k dreams for the coming year! (Read 8784 times) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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cballero
1024 MB  Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever 
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on: December 31, 2022, 22:37
So while so much has been unearthed, re-discovered, fixed and even developed for Classic Macs, a few tantalizing next-steps have been just out of reach of Classic Mac users  here's my (doable?) tiny wish list (and please let me know what else I may have missed)  I'm not asking for a more compatible web browser or office suite since web standards and file formats have evolved too much to make such asks practical. Most of these have been talked about here and there but this thread is to list these missing gold nuggets! The focus of my collection seeks to add 68k versions of apps that don't exist in the 68k-space  1. 68k WebDAV Client Goliath was a very neat open-source project that gave Classic PPC Macs the ability to access and send files to and from online storage providers. This ability was never coded for 68k Macs and we had a programmer at the verge of producing such a masterful version. Sadly, he lost the files he was working on and they weren't backed-up. But thankfully, his project at least showed this program can be made 68k-compatible! 2. Skinnable 68k MP3 Player MPEGDEC is a brilliant assembly program that really delivers in terms of size, function and processing efficiency. Having said this, its creators left the doors open to make either skinned versions of the app or even better, a skinnable version of the app. Kaleidoscope is amazing in it ability to change the GUI appearance of the Finder and most programs that get their GUI from the Finder. Producing a patch or simply a patched version of the program would make it visually richer and add to the fun of using an already very fun media program. Other tangents on this idea included skinning it to look like the QuickTime player. This program almost got some of these options added to it, but the same tragic event wiped that version out of existence, but it shows that it would need a little focused investment from another experienced and talented programmer like BBG to knock it out again. 3. Zip tool that preserves Mac resource forks One open-source tool can already do this, MiniUnZp, (yay!) but it requires the zipped file (inside) to have a specific name instead of its own name  MacZip doesn't preserve anything, also with available source code, so if the code of one or both programs could be worked on to accomplish this feat, it would save so many programs that have been sealed with Mac resource forks but cannot be unzipped successfully because of this limitation. It seems like this limitation could be overcome someway without too much fuss or mess, it just needs some focused attention to get that done (of course it really would have helped for peeps to have archived their Mac programs using less destructive Mac archiving tools over the many years peeps archived so much Classic software as Zip files)  4. A 68k Mac Browser Plugin or Standalone EPUB HTML Reader (so this one's a bit trickier, if for no other reason because all EPUB readers were written with much newer programming code than what existed back in the days of 68k Macs) so, upon discovering that EPUBs are zip files that have simple HTML in them, it made perfect sense to either see about (I don't know if other book formats like MOBI are as simple to use) 1) porting a nice (most likely an open-source) EPUB program to be 68k-compatible (but I'd imagine the ZIP format may be a troublesome hurdle) 2) creating a web browser plugin to read unzipped EPUB files (again, to circumvent the ZIP format) 3) reprogramming an existing web browser to act as an (unzipped) EPUB reader (if any exist that are open source? possibly Netscape? But I believe it went open-source after the early 68k Mac versions came out) 4) programming a EPUB reader from scratch that can read an unzipped EPUB in the way EPUB readers normally do 5) creating a EPUB file converter that can output files that would be easy for early web browsers to read (the older the browsers the better since those ran much faster than the newest browsers) 5. An offline PDF converter to make PDF 1.4 (and maybe higher versions?) into PDF 1.3 Adobe had just developed its portable doc format, but subsequent versions were PPC-only, so it makes sense to have a nice PDF version converter that can easily convert newer PDFs into 68k-compatible documents. I remember we covered this topic at some point, but having a small conversion program would make a wealth of PDFs so much more accessible to 68k Macs. 6. A Plugin or Package to Churn Out Classic Mac-friendly Videos with modern video tools Something that would make it super easy to take your own video libraries and convert them to Mac video formats like Sorenson and maybe even the older Cinepak. This would make using our older Macs even more fun for anyone interested in video-editing and building their personal old-school video collections. 7. A Classic Video Player Server/Database? So this is (I think, possibly) the most ambitious of my Classic Mac ideas, but it would be really cool to have some type of either hostable LAN-streaming server (perhaps similar to Cornica?) or similarly LAN-capable video jukebox (aka, a primitive Plex server) that could serve an easy-to-use and maybe even search video library using Classic Web Browsers (even if in the end you'd need to download and then play). The trick is anything like this only exists for modern browsers. The locally-hosted video would only be saved in formats playable by the client OS. I'd want something automated and more exciting than a bunch of links on an FTP or HTTP server. 8. Similar Classic Servers/Databases for EPUBs and MP3s So I think the way radio stations provide real-time MP3-audio links, similarly you could create your own home servers that would be accessible to our Macs on the network. Similarly, after assembling a publication server for my Ebook collection, I thought it would be pretty cool to have something similar for Classic Macs but using simpler web protocols to achieve similar functionality on Classic Mac web browsers. Such media libraries would be crazy fun to have in you local network! (I know S7T does have a pretty slick tool in the works for MP3s, but this idea would be exclusively for your own stuff at home)So I just offered a tiny list of Classic Mac wishes! Now getting from concept-to-execution is a whole different ballgame! I didn't include any 68k dock ideas because there's quite a few pretty decent docks for early Macs  Anyway, whaddaya peeps think? |
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB  Posts: 2023
Reply #1 on: January 02, 2023, 17:09
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Well those are some excellent ideas, thanks @cballero! An ePub reader for System 7 would be an interesting idea. Also I'd love to see a Kiosk style app that has all the back issues of Macintosh mags and newsletters from the 80 & 90s for easy Exploration. What I'd also like to see is either a website or a software for System 7 compatible wallpapers accessible from the very machines.
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #2 on: January 02, 2023, 20:36
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Quote from: Bolkonskij I'd love to see a Kiosk style app that has all the back issues of Macintosh mags and newsletters from the 80 & 90s for easy Exploration.Exactly! I stumbled upon and setup an ebook server called Ubooquity which handles the downloading and viewing EPUBs, CBRs, PDFs and others on web browsers over LAN. It allows me to read from any web browser (modern ones obviously, lol) on my mobile and desktop devices. Ideally, I'd love to have a simplified ebook server like this for our old Macs that's compatible with old, legacy browsers and could serve EPUBs and PDFs, either natively (for say EPUBs since they're nothing more than zipped HTML files) and via a plugin for the PDFs (since that's the only way we're able to access PDFs on our web browsers) That would be spectacular, but it'd be okay to begin with less-lofty aims for now. So as many of us know, the Mac OS wallpaper patterns had a little competition from other pattern programs. I remember using one with some really psychedelic patterns which were way cool (I of course forget it's name right now) but it offered somewhat what you're imagining. When Windows came out with the contextual menu for set as desktop (wait, didn't Mac OS 8.5-9.x also have that feature) a really cool INIT and/or program to set desktop wallpaper images (at least to my knowledge) never appeared. A good number of screensaver utilities did, but no wallpaper ones. I've long been a fan of cool wallpaper images and backgrounds, but I've always resorted to the OS tools to set them up. So are you thinking of like a thumb-nailed library of wallpaper images to pick from? That would be really cool indeed!
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #3 on: January 02, 2023, 21:21
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Back conversion of PDF files is already possible under Linux and similar tools should exist for Apple and Windoze. MacZip does a fairly good job at assigning/preserving creator/type IDs and you can convert most picture-less ePubs to Palm format - for which there are readers for 68k. Also, there are plenty of video tools for 68k, but converting modern day mkv files to classic format would involve file sizes that most classic systems can't handle. But ou can always convert those files downwards with ffmepg and the like. Last not least: I will never understand why people think they don't need to perform backups, simply because they work on a vintage system. If you don't respect your data, you will loose your data.
Last Edit: January 02, 2023, 21:51 by 68040
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #4 on: January 02, 2023, 21:31
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PS #2: @cballero Quote So are you thinking of like a thumb-nailed library of wallpaper images to pick from? That would be really cool indeed! Why not use Portfolio, Fetch or Gallery for that? They allow you to store all your images and multimedia files in dedicated databases, with previews and added search criteria.
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MTT
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256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer
Reply #5 on: January 03, 2023, 00:04
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Hello @cballero: Nice list with great suggestions. Quote from: cballero: "3. Zip tool that preserves Mac resource forksBut I'm not sure what you mean there, as that is exactly the opposite of what MacZip does by default, i.e.; it preserves Mac resource forks. You actually need to work at it to not preserve resource fork data The downside of MacZip is that it requires MacZip at the receiving end to restore a MacZip'd archive's data/resource forks correctly. Same must be said for OS X's Archive Utility's handling of data/resource forks when creating zip archives. Where it requires using the built-in OS X Archive Utility at the receiving end to unzip and restore its own zipped classic data/resource forks correctly. MacZip stores a file's resource fork data in its "XtraStuf.mac" folder inside of the zipped archive. OS X's Archive Utility stores a file's resource fork data in its "__MACOSX" folder inside of the zipped archive. Exceptions to the above are CharlesSoft's "Pacifist" app on OS X, being the only other program that I know of that will extract and correctly parse and restore from MacZip archives (on a non classic system). And for parsing a Mac OS X Archive Utility's, classic Mac zipped archive on classic Mac systems; a combination of MacZip and Decode AppleFile can restore those tricky OS X zipped archives on a ('020 and above) System 7 Mac.
Last Edit: January 03, 2023, 06:26 by MTT
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #6 on: January 03, 2023, 04:35
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Oh wow, so OS X zips are unzippable then? That's fantastic news! I thought MiniUnZip was the only one that could do it, just with that specific naming quirk; only to find out that another tool could be used to unzip those files when used in tandem with each other, how clever! Of course, if you don't know.. (lol, it reminds me of when people ask you, "did you read the manual?")
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #7 on: January 03, 2023, 20:15
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I always read the manual, that or the help file that goes along with it.
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