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| Author | Idle hands in search of new programming project... (Read 198074 times) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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lauland
512 MB  Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer! 
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on: December 10, 2024, 21:00
Hey all you wonderful folk out there! It's been a while since I've done any classic Mac development and I'm missing it. It was certainly an excellent way to burn off my excess mental energy and distract me from events in the greater world. The dopamine hit from when I actually accomplished things was quite pleasant too. Lately I've been too much in my own head space a bit. So, I'm looking for a project to contribute to, and as before, the collaboration and the social aspect, for what it's worth, really. I can code all day long by myself, but with no external goal/focus, it's just spinning my wheels. What that means is, I'm not completely opposed to leading something, but only if there are actual followers/co-leaders/whatever also working with me together (and not just "ataboy, great work!"). Otherwise, if there's something existing stalled that needs new brains and blood, that'd be just as good. For those who may not know what I've worked on before, there are plenty of posts here, and, I believe, everything I've done (on the Mac) is at MG (with posts/comments about them too). So you could get an idea of my "mad skilz", etc. So...ideas/hopes/desires/wishes? |
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snes1423
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256 MB Posts: 458 A Man born of Mechina
Reply #1 on: December 10, 2024, 23:12
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would love to see a port of a new version of iNES to os9
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MTT
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256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer
Reply #2 on: December 10, 2024, 23:56
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Hello lauland. Yes! I have a specific request that I hope you can help me with here. In fact I had been meaning to ask you for your opinion on this for some time, but hadn't gotten around to it until today. I need a Mini vMac (8bit color, Mac II variation build) for PPC Mac OSs (7.5 - 9.2.2). My issue is that I've been able to build OK the Mac II variation for classic PPC Mac using compilers CodeWarrior Pro 8 IDE and MPW (final Gold Master release) on a classic PPC Mac - But the resulting builds will not run in color. I cannot for the life of me get a color build to display color - the default build is 8bit color, any other color setting doesn't matter, all compiled builds will run with a mono display, only. I have had no problem building the Mac II variation successfully for OS X, and Windows, and they run in color, but building this variation for a classic Mac OS has me totally stumped. For example: Here's a screenshot of the CWPro8 MvM II, 3.5.8 build running on Mac OS 9.2.2 note the lack of any color option in the Control Panel. This is typical of all builds compiled for use in a classic Mac OS. Here's a screenshot of the same startup disk running on a 32bit Windows build of MvM II v3.5.8 (and what I'd hoped to see in a Mac OS 7-9 build). The source (builders) for these can be downloaded from this MG page. I used source (builders) from the top 2 download links; minivmac-3.4.1.src and minivmac-3.5.8.src - The 3.4.1 source compiles without error in MPW and the 3.5.8 source compiles without error in CWPro8. -MPW builds the 3.5.8 source without errors too, but the resulting Mini vMac doesn't appear to run correctly at all, 3.4.1 has no problem (but none display color). If you scroll down in the comments on that MG page to around July 7 2024, you will see my post describing what I've tried -it has the links to those two screenshots above (and links to the MPW gold master, etc). Gryphel's Building Mini vMac (WA) instructions I found useful when it comes to compiling MvM on these older systems. Anyway, if you can help or offer some advice on this, I would really appreciate it.
Last Edit: December 11, 2024, 00:16 by MTT
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB  Posts: 2023
Reply #3 on: December 11, 2024, 10:12
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Lauland, it's great to have you back and looking for a project again!  Is there anything in particular you'd like to try? Or a particular category of software?
Last Edit: December 11, 2024, 10:17 by Bolkonskij
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lauland
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512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!
Reply #4 on: December 11, 2024, 16:48
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I'm open to whatever. It's more important to me to have something other people will work on with me than anything. ie I don't really want to just be a code monkey and build something somebody wants but can't be bothered to research and learn how and do themselves. Would really love to empower other people to learn programing etc. One can hope, eh? ---- @MTT Will definitely look at Mini vMac and color. I love @Jatoba's gif "tutorial". Extremely clever and has the advantage that non-English speakers can understand it just as well. Would have never thought of that! @snes1423 Let me know some version numbers, what currently DOES run, and what doesn't. Just "new" doesn't say much...although I'm sure what you meant was "as new as possible", eh? Can take a look if you like. I already did something quite like this for UAE, where I took the 0.8.6 PPC sources and hacked together an M68k version that didn't exist. ---- Yeah, I got the flu badly (not covid thank God!)...at one point, humorously, I lost my voice (made zoom meeting awkward), but when it came back that extremely rare weird thing where your vocal chords can get partially paralyzed happened to me. Being a musician I took it in stride and was temporarily amused as my vocal range dropped at least half an octave lower! Had a lot of fun singing "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" by Crash Test Dummies accurately for the first time among other songs (Johnny Cash etc). Was amazing to be able to hit those very low notes with actual power for about a week. Also have been really battling bots and web crawlers taking servers down at work. Have about a hundred machines to deal with, and each and every one is different and bespoke, but mercifully are cloud vm's. That sucked a lot of my brains and time out. Still dealing with the trickier ones that don't identify themselves as bots.
Last Edit: December 11, 2024, 19:44 by lauland
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #5 on: December 12, 2024, 08:03
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So IF you're looking for something that will not only serve as a good training subject but also deliver a real help to folks using System 7, let's do a simple 68k-based program for tracking household expenses. Because after trying I find that the much-praised Quicken series is actually a very buggy and most software out there is catering to 1980's America, meaning stuff like cheques and such, which nobody of us in Europe ever used to the degree (and much less in this day and age) As you can see, 68040 is struggling with Quicken as well but it's something that nearly every Mac should be capable of. Yes, one could theoretically use Excel for that but after trying it (and Spreadsheet 2000) I find them so general and lacking focus that I really wish there'd be a dedicated application for this. Aside from that, it's a programming project that doesn't require fiddling with tons of assets, it's pretty straightforward computational. More focus on the routines! A big plus would be the ability to parse and import bank transactions from online banking services either via API or manually. But I'm getting way ahead. It'd be interesting to have the development process documented and all the thoughts that go into this, in order to finally have the ability to see an entire development process from start to end instead of only small pieces. Does that sound interesting?
Last Edit: December 13, 2024, 07:11 by Bolkonskij
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lauland
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512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!
Reply #6 on: December 12, 2024, 17:06
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Hmm...interesting? Maybe not (not too many people get excited about financial programs), but useful and (potentially) good, definitely! I have a lot of experience on software projects and can give you a good outline on issues, sticky points, and ideas for such a beast: First, no need to limit to m68k, of course, but what you describe is simple enough that, could even be targeted at something as lowly as a System 6 Mac Plus, since it doesn't sound like it'd need a lot of resources. I know some people out there have interest in learning about the very old systems (and the discipline and challenge it takes to squeeze in there), and they make good targets for learning as they're so simple. (You only need Inside Mac vol 1 for documentation, seriously). Second, there's two very different, and potentially separate aspects to such a program: The front end gui, and the back end calculations slash file access. The back end isn't and doesn't have to be Mac specific, so could even leverage existing code...ie we could add a Mac gui to something we find that already does everything you describe. This would save a LOT of time, allow us to focus on the actual Mac part of the project, and we'd know it already actually worked. Third, I'd 100% be willing to join doing something like this, but with the caveat that I would not end up being the sole contributor, or one that does 90% of the work, as has happened somewhat on previous projects. I have to deal with financials enough at my day job, and they have to pay me to tolerate that. I have zero interest in dealing with that in my spare time unless it were a group effort and/or served to actually have people learning programming. Fourth, I immediately thought that this might be something that could be cobbled together in HyperCard. Doing the back end calculations would be a bit irritating to do in HyperTalk being the language is obscure, somewhat limited, and you end up getting caught up in goofy syntax weirdness since it is quite different from modern languages. But it's an idea. Maybe RealBasic (etc) or another non-C language slash gui oriented package would be good for this? Finally, if it were done in C, the gui would be sketched out in ResEdit mostly, vs more pedestrian (and modern) C back end code. This provides a good divide for team efforts. GUI people may have different skills than C coders. But...I've had...experiences...in the past where the two teams are separated too much or don't communicate productively. You end up with two parts that don't quite fit together harmoniously. Just something to watch out for in team projects.
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snes1423
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256 MB Posts: 458 A Man born of Mechina
Reply #7 on: December 12, 2024, 17:11
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@lauland the newest version is 2.0 from 2000 and it has poor compatibility with the mario games for instance
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lauland
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512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!
Reply #8 on: December 12, 2024, 17:40
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@snes1423 Doing a little research finds https://fms.komkon.org/iNES/ Note: "...you can license the iNES source code from me." Further searches show other people saying things like: "...Don't mail me asking for the source either: iNES source code is not publicly distrbutable, as much as I regret to say this." "... iNES is a closed source product; Kawase may have offered advice, testing, or reported bugs, but being closed source, he never touched the code..." So it doesn't look like this is possible, sorry.
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MTT
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256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer
Reply #9 on: December 13, 2024, 01:45
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Quote from: Bolkonskij: "Quicken series is actually a very buggy..."What? An htmls link to the MG ? tsk tsk. I am shocked. How could you? 
Last Edit: December 13, 2024, 01:49 by MTT
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #10 on: December 13, 2024, 04:28
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@MTT: we're practically ALL been guilty of adding secure links, but that was a good rub, lol! 
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #11 on: December 13, 2024, 05:51
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@Lauland: I just want to truly thank you again for a job well done with the successful porting of Goliath for 68k Macs!  I have successfully used it with a WebDAV server hosted on my small Samsung Android tablet from my Mac OS 8 Mac it performs perfectly! I have used it to send PDF printouts of epubs I converted online to RTF docs, then within my 68k Mac I've then converted them into docs for my two favorite Word Processors: MS Word 5.1a and WriteNow 4 (and as much as I love Word, by adding a special character or simply editing within a certain place within my converted files using WriteNow, I'm able to open the file and it jumps right to the point I saved my cursor at, allowing me to return to the page I was last reading in, which makes WriteNow my perfect 68k Mac ebook reader!) But, I digress After configuring my helper web browser to iCab using Internet Config, Goliath used it to download copies of files and documents from my tablet's WebDAV server I also used Goliath to upload PDF, DOC and RTF documents to my tablet, so all the features I used and tested work perfectly on the 68k version of Goliath that you worked on, so thank you so much for all your brilliant efforts with this super cool program! 
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #12 on: December 13, 2024, 07:48
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Quote from: MTT What? An htmls link to the MG ? tsk tsk. I am shocked. How could you? Like the single one time I'm on S7T from modern gear due to work and posting - MTT shows up and immediately recognizes it. Creepy! :-D ... mea culpa! I've corrected it and sentenced myself to 30 minutes of painful IPX network configuration on Windows 95! @lauland Good thoughts here! Hypercard might be an option but we will likely end up with some crazy spaghetti code. I'm not sure how reliably it handles writing/reading from file - simply no experience here. I do think such a program would ideally be coded in C for the merit of speed even on underpowered 68k machines. As for your suggestion to pick up something that already works, I assume you mean like an existing program (written in ANSI C?) that does this and we're just doing the port to Macintosh?
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #13 on: December 13, 2024, 14:33
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Going way back "envelope budgeting" was a common, very simple and very useful method of budgeting for the home. It pops up on the grid about every decade and I think its current iteration is called "cash stuffing budgeting". It is a very easy home budget method and also lends itself to being easy to setup in Hypercard. This is a modern browser simple explanation. <https://www.bankrate.com/banking/savings/cash-stuffing-budgeting/> Our family has used it going back a century and even though I am very tech addicted, home finance is something that I never computerized.
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lauland
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512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!
Reply #14 on: December 13, 2024, 17:39
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You can do ANYTHING in HyperCard (literally, if you include XCMD's, but that's kinda cheating)...even things you really really shouldn't, if you value your sanity! I think the financial program we're talking about might be just the right size for it, and there's the much smaller learning curve as opposed to C, and pretty much effortless UI, so people with less programming experience might be able to actually participate that way. You can absolutely handle files, but, as @Bolkonskij very correctly points out, the calculation code could easily become quite crazy spaghetti barely human readable to anyone not highly versed in HyperTalk (which then defeats half the reason to use HyperCard)! The very real danger is getting the math right, with things like operator precedence. Yeah, if anyone can find an "envelope budgeting" or "cash-stuffing-budgeting" program that doesn't have a GUI, adding a Mac one could be nice...and like I said, that way we wouldn't have to worry about getting the math (which is the whole point) right. ---- @Bolkonskij Dang, I'm always forgetting to use http and not https in all my links too! ---- @cballero Aw! You made my small heart grow three sizes! Glad to hear you actually were able to make use of it. I really expected bug reports, so didn't know! The code I hacked to replace MacOS 8.5's Unicode support was VERY iffy and I suspected didn't really work. I never did figure out why generic icons show up on older Systems either. It also always bothered me that it was version 1.0.0, as the 1.0.1 (or newer?) sources couldn't be found. (For those not familiar, I took the PPC version of Goliath requiring MacOS 8.1 and bodged an M68k one that'd run on System 7.5.x...it ended up needing a pretty wild mutant CodeWarrior kludged together).
Last Edit: December 13, 2024, 17:41 by lauland
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