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America Online
APPLE II DEVELOPMENT FORUM CONFERENCE LOG
Tuesday, February 26, 1991  10:00 p.m. Eastern Time
Topic:  Open Topic
Forum Leader:  Dave Sugar (AFL Dyfet)


AFA Gary J Does anyone know if ORCA/M has a bitwise logical directive for
           immediate data?
AFA Gary J (Like  LDA #Lable.EOR.$FFFF)
AFA Gary J (I can't seem to find anything that works BIT-WISE in the docs)
ShanoJ     It doesn't. I asked last week. :(
AFA Parik  there's .and. i believe
AFA Parik  look on page 175
ShanoJ     But none of the .xxx.'s are bitwise... They all return either 0 or
           1.
AFA Gary J Yeah, there's .and. and also .or., but they are boolean.
AFA Parik  oh, you're right.  bummer
AFA Gary J Right, Jonah.
AFL Dyfet  That's what C is for ;)
AFA Parik  waste the extra cycles and let the gs do it ;)
AFA Gary J I guess the only way is to figure it out yourself, and stick it
           in.
ShanoJ     The best we could come up with is #$FFFF-myConstant
AFA Gary J (I think Merlin has a way to do it)
AFA Gary J That's a good way, Jonah.

AFL Dyfet  Tonight's our open topic night.....
AFL Dyfet  Okay, what development topics do others wish to persue?? :)
Dave Lyons Anybody wanna know the stupidest thing I did lately?  Okay, I'll
           tell you anyway:  I was using
Dave Lyons LocalToGlobal and GlobalToLocal to translate
Dave Lyons rectangles between local and global coordinates.  It wasn't
           working too well!
Dave Lyons (Those calls offset POINTS, not rectangles.  I was only offsetting
           the top-left of my rectangles.)
Dave Lyons :-(  It's okay, I only wasted about 20 minutes figuring this out.
           :)
AFA Gary J :)
ShanoJ     That's okay, took me about 2 DAYS to figure out how to make a
           rectagle drawing
ShanoJ     tool work properly so you could draw up and to the left instead of
           only down 
ShanoJ     and to the right. Whazzat? Switch the coordinates? Ooooohhhh....
           :)
AFA Gary J GSBug showed you the way, no doubt? :)  (It has done so to me,
           many times :)
Dave Lyons Yeah, I didn't whack myself on the forehead until I watched 2 out
           of the 4 words of my rectangle
Dave Lyons change when I executed the call in GSBug.  DUH....
AFA Gary J :)
AFA Gary J (I have an imprint of my hand - permanant - on my forehead :)
Dave Lyons (Yeah, but switch a COPY of the coordinates while you're
           rubber-banding, or you can get a really
Dave Lyons icky effect.  You need to keep your anchor point intact.)
AFL Dyfet  Don't rattle your skull :)
ShanoJ     Ya, after figuring out to switch 'em at all, that only took
           another 5 or 6
ShanoJ     hours... :)
Matt DTS   Is there any chance we're going to discuss programming here
           tonight?
AFA Gary J I hope so, Matt
JayJ 89    <--Q about LongStatText2
AFL Dyfet  Me too, Matt!  Okay, since we have an interesting crowd here now,
           is there any-
AFL Dyfet  one who is currently looking for help with a project?
AFA Gary J Go for it, Jay (we need a question)
JayJ 89    Ok, what are the 'embedded codes'?
JayJ 89    are they the same ones for the long line edit 2 one?
Matt DTS   Well, it turns out (in researching this a while back), that
           Toolbox Reference doesn't actually
Matt DTS   bother to tell you that LongStatText2 items are drawn with
           LETextBox2.
Matt DTS   (I think it was in the release notes for System Disk 2.0 or
           something.)  Anyway, LETextBox2 codes
Matt DTS   are what you use.  GA.
JayJ 89    AH! :)  I thought so, but I wasn't sure :)
AFL Dyfet  Okay, anyone else have a question?

Dave Lyons Jonah, BTW on rubber-banding rectangles.  Have you noticed the QD
           call "Pt2Rect"?  It takes care of
Dave Lyons building a rectangle out of 2 points for you.  (Not that it's
           hard, but it's there. More useful than
Dave Lyons "SetPt", for example. :-)

ShanoJ     Oh, I've got one for the Apple guys: ever looked at the
           description of
ShanoJ     SelectMember2 in TB Ref3? It's not documented too well... :(
Matt DTS   No, Jonah.  We had an agreement that no one would look at that
           call's description.  We're frankly
Matt DTS   amazed it's included at all.
Matt DTS   :-P
Dave Lyons (looking...)
AFL Dyfet  :)
Dave Lyons Okay, I read it.  What does it omit?
Surak TFF  It omits everything... :)
Matt DTS   Jonah seems to have bit the big one.  He'll probably be back,
           though.
Surak TFF  Well, this was one of the things he helped me out on with my list
           control...
Surak TFF  See, the SelectMember2 and ResetMember2 descriptions in TB3 are
           virtually
Surak TFF  identical...
ShanoJ     That was an example of the crash I'd been talking about, Dave...
           :(
AFA Gary J Must be the 1200 baud, Jonah :)
ShanoJ     Naw, I've been having the hellish problem that about 5% of the
           time, when I hit
ShanoJ     OA-Ctl-Esc to go to the CP, the GS freezes. :(
Matt DTS   Let me try a different tack:  Why is the SelectMember2
           documentation inadequate?
Matt DTS   What didn't you understand?
ShanoJ     Well, SelectMember2 doesn't say exactly what it does. Compare the
           SelectMember
ShanoJ     and SelectMember call descriptions to see what the problem is. 
Matt DTS   You wanna try that again, Jonah?
Surak TFF  Jonah, do you mean ResetMember2?
ShanoJ     Wait a sec, I've got the wrong call here... :( I meant
           ResetMember2. It doesn't
ShanoJ     say that it resets the member, it just says that it returns the
           selected one.
ShanoJ     (Is it Monday? Sure feels like one... :( )
Dave Lyons The only interesting difference I see is that SelectMember says
           "Important:  The specified
Dave Lyons member is not selected if it is disabled."
Dave Lyons Yeah, good point.  But you can figure it out by osmosis if you put
           TB Ref 1 on your head while
Dave Lyons you read it....
ShanoJ     That makes the call LOOK identical to NextMember2, which it's
           NOT.
Matt DTS   Ah.  Yeah, the List Manager Update chapter originally didn't
           include *any* call descriptions.
Matt DTS   They all just said "XXXX2 works just like XXXX; see Volume 1 for
           details."  The actual descriptions
Matt DTS   were added late in the cycle and didn't get as much attention as
           they should have.  Sorry.
ShanoJ     Actually, this is about the only one that I DIDN'T get tripped up
           on. A friend
ShanoJ     did, though, which is why I thought I'd bring it to your
           attention.
Dave Lyons (I've made a note to get somebody to cram something into #24 for
           the 'next' TN batch.  Next=May)
Dave Lyons (So, did you find Pt2Rect?  Was that what made you hang?)
Surak TFF  :)
ShanoJ     Ya, I went to look in NL at Pt2Rect, and the computer froze. :( By
           ya, I 
ShanoJ     whipped out the book and you're right, that would work a lot
           better. :) Is 
ShanoJ     there a call like that for the Mac with a different name? I seem
           to remember 
ShanoJ     seeing something like that, then looking in my GS books and not
           being able to
ShanoJ     find it...
AFA Gary J McPt2Rect
Dave Lyons I think it's Pt2Rect on the Mac, too...that's actually where I
           used it first (ducking).
ShanoJ     Hmm... Okay, guess it was just a stupid programmer error... :)
ShanoJ     Okay, I've got a general question...
ShanoJ     You can go first, Mike...
Nuzz       I read in a technote( Ithink) that there is a clipboard scrap
           type
Nuzz       How would that be displayed? As data, etc
Nuzz       GA
Nuzz       oops, for sound I mean
Matt DTS   Waitwaitwait...
Matt DTS   Oh.
JWankerl   (On the same note, is the TextEdit style scrap type documented?)
Matt DTS   I would recommend displaying a button in a clipboard window that
           lets you play the sound.
Matt DTS   As for TE scraps - this will be documented in the March 1991
           revision to IIgs #99.  It's basically
Matt DTS   just a TEFormat structure in the given scrap type (which I don't
           recall off the top of my head).  
Matt DTS   GA 
AFL Dyfet  Go ahead Surak :)
Dave Lyons ($64, I think)
Surak TFF  Well, I was just going to say that a sound clipboard scrap would
           most probably
Surak TFF  be either played, or displayed in a sound program as a graphic
           representation
Surak TFF  of the waveform....
Surak TFF  GS
Surak TFF  (Arrgh... GA)
Nuzz       The reason I asked is that I noticed that HCGS uses both picture
           and (data?) as
Nuzz       scrap
Nuzz       when you cut a card
Nuzz       will that be documented too?
Dave Lyons (HCGS uses at least 8 nonstandard scrap types; we may wind up
           documenting some of them, but I'm not
Dave Lyons sure how many that would be appropriate for.  We'll see for May. 
           ga)
AFL Dyfet  I guess Jonah is next :)...GA Jonah...
ShanoJ     Okay, this is another survey question: I'm writing a module for
           NiftyList. The
ShanoJ     'theme' of this module is "File stuff". Currently it'll save any
           block of 
ShanoJ     memory to a file, load a file into memory, dump either the data or
           resource
ShanoJ     fork of a file to the screen (in a format like ;h) set prefixes,
           give file and
ShanoJ     device info, expand pathnames, and give info on filetypes (like
           the \rtype 
ShanoJ     comand). What else would YOU like to see added?
Dave Lyons Does it load a file into a new handle?
Dave Lyons Does the hex-dump stuff do duplicate-line compression like ;h?
ShanoJ     No, you give it an address for the loadblk command (e12000\loadblk
           "MyScreen")
ShanoJ     "duplicate-line compression"?
ShanoJ     The new handle is a good idea, though! :)
Dave Lyons If you give loadblk a 0 address, I'd like to see it return you a
           newly allocated handle full of the
Dave Lyons file contents.
Dave Lyons Jonah, do a 2000.3000;h or something; unless to turn off the
           preference, it compresses duplicate
Dave Lyons lines of information (like long blocks of $00s) into a single
           line, filled with '' '' ''...
JWankerl   It should also load blocks from either a resource fork or a data
           fork.
Dave Lyons Does the filetype stuff use FTDs in *:Icons?
Dave Lyons Is there a Catalog command?
ShanoJ     Quite right, it does... Never noticed that. :(
ShanoJ     Quite right, Joe. Dunno how I missed that one. :(
ShanoJ     Catalog is on the list already, and no, it uses it's own data file
           for the 
ShanoJ     filetypes...
Matt DTS   WRONG!
Matt DTS   (John McLaughlin imitation)
Matt DTS   What, may I ask, is the point of using your own file for filetype
           information when there's already
Matt DTS   a well-documented format to use?  It's like having an icon file
           that's not Finder-compatible.
ShanoJ     Come on, Matt, you can answer that yourself--it was a helluva lot
           easier.
ShanoJ     Don't you know me that well by know?! :)
JWankerl   (Well, to be silly, no other program uses Finder icons -- I don't
           think)
Matt DTS   "easy" <> "right"
ShanoJ     "by know"?! LOL... :(
Dave Lyons At the risk of being concise and polite, I suggest you use FTDs
           when you get a chance.  But don't
Dave Lyons delay releasing your module for that, do it in 1.1.
Matt DTS   So you'll make everyone store the same information on disk twice,
           and in memory twice, and it won't
Matt DTS   be updatable by replacing FTDs, and will generally be a pain. 
           (Concise and polite?  He just wants
Matt DTS   more modules released soon.  :)
AFA Gary J :)
ShanoJ     I'll work on adding that, though... It's a good idea and I SHOULD
           have done it
ShanoJ     in the first place.
Nuzz       Hey, GDL uses Finder Icons :)
ShanoJ     Though, to tell the truth, my FIRST version used the filetypes
           built into the
ShanoJ     program (they were in a DATA/END block). At least this version
           load's 'em from
ShanoJ     a file like NiftyList does all of it's data... (boy, was that
           fun... :)
ShanoJ     Okay any other suggestions?
JWankerl   Not any that I can think of right now, nope.
Dave Lyons Do you have a \type command to read a regular text file?
ShanoJ     Damn, you know I thought of that right before I started this... So
           no, I don't,
ShanoJ     but it's coming....
Dave Lyons That would be really handy!
AFL Dyfet  Yes it would!
AFA Gary J Yep (I use Filetools for that now)
ShanoJ     Ya, and I could get rid of Glen Bredon's 'TypeIt' :)
ShanoJ     (I already dumped DumpIt...:)
AFA Gary J :)
Matt DTS   I wonder how appropriate it is to turn Nifty List into a shell
           just because we *can*.
ShanoJ     Okay, well, this is an ongoing thing, so if you ever wake up in
           the middle of
ShanoJ     the night with a desire for another feature, you know where to
           find me...
AFA Gary J Now, we just need to make Nifty List access the ORCA assembler
Dave Lyons Matt, you don't have to use the commands if you don't like them.
Matt DTS   Not my point, Dave.  I was just wondering about the consequences
           of a CDA-based shell, and if it's a
Matt DTS   good idea whether it should be something that interprets EXE files
           and shell commands as well.
AFL Dyfet  With Nifty Programmers Workbench?? :")...Nifty-C and Nifty-Pascal
           :)
ShanoJ     I'm done--your turn, Joe. 
AFA Gary J :)
ShanoJ     (I think it's a good idea, myself. It cuts down on a lot of the
           overhead with
ShanoJ     all of the cool stuff Dave's built into there...)

JWankerl   Okay, um... can I start up the ResourceManager with a derived ID
           using the
JWankerl   new StartUpTools call to make the resource manager load resources
           using that
JWankerl   alternate ID?
Dave Lyons Yes, no problem.
Dave Lyons Just make sure you use the exact same ID if you call
Dave Lyons SetCurResourceApp.  Different derived IDs -are- considered
           different by the Resource Manager.
JWankerl   Also, I install an application code resource converter - does it
           need to be 
JWankerl   uninstalled before I shut down or does the ResourceShutDown kill
           it?
Dave Lyons If you're an NDA and want the system to make you the current
           resource app when it calls you, you
Dave Lyons must use your $50xx ID, not a $5nxx ID. ga
Dave Lyons ResourceShutDown automatically logs out your converters for you,
           you don't have to log them
Dave Lyons out first.
JWankerl   Okay, that saves 5 lines of code.  :-)  One final ? for me --
           about FMD --
JWankerl   I want to install it as a user tool, what files do I need in my
           applications
JWankerl   directory to do this?  FakeModalTool?  Is that it?  It looks a bit
           short to
JWankerl   do this.
Dave Lyons Yup, just FakeModalTool.
Dave Lyons (It's pretty compact.)
JWankerl   Okay, thanks.  That's it for now.
ShanoJ     (Matt, do I need to log out Twiligt's converter?)
Matt DTS   Jonah:  When do you shut Twilight down?
ShanoJ     (At system shut down. But I only use the converter once, when
           BootCDEV is 
ShanoJ     called.)
Matt DTS   Then it wouldn't hurt to log it out when you're done with it to
           save a little memory (if you can also
Matt DTS   dispose of it).
Dave Lyons (Is the converter just the CodeResConverter?)
Matt DTS   (Dave:  No, a custom one.)