LOS Tool Ideas

[bmwcyclist]

To add to the project list (maybe this should be a separate thread?)

I am going to see if I can make a LisaWrite-to-RTF converter.

Assuming no one else is working on or has already made one

[sigma7]

A LOS tool that will help manage serialized tools/apps would be useful.

Desirable features may include:

• List the apps on a hard drive that are serialized
• List the serial number(s) applied to each of those apps
• Re-serialize the apps to the current machines SN (or perhaps be able to specify an SN in anticipation of use on another specific machine)
• De-serialize the apps (No idea if this is useful for an app already installed on the hard drive)

edit: Perhaps some of this is already done, and maybe just needs to be packaged in a LOS tool: Ray previously wrote in https://lisalist2.com/index.php?topic=313.0

The deserialize tool ( https://github.com/rayarachelian/lisaem/blob/master/src/tools/src/los-deserialize.c ) will now work on hard drives as well and will remove not only the serial number but the copy inhibition flag (I call it bozo-bit which is in line with the original Mac System bozo-bit that was later removed.) There's also a tool that will let you enable the bozo bit ( https://github.com/rayarachelian/lisaem/blob/master/src/tools/src/los-bozo-on.c ), but this just sets a flag that prevents LOS from allowing you to freely copy a tool.

[sigma7]

A LOS app/tool that will renumber an installed tool/app might be useful (if such a thing is possible).

[AlexTheCat123]

A LOS app/tool that will renumber an installed tool/app might be useful (if such a thing is possible).

It would be possible for certain tools, but perhaps not for others. Some tools (including many of the stock LOS ones) have their number hard-coded at one or more places within their source code, so you'd need to either recompile or find this string and carefully patch the tool, with the caveat that the new tool number string can't be longer or shorter than the original one.

I've noticed that when LLMs generate LOS apps, they really like hard-coding their tool numbers too, presumably because so many LOS apps do it and they just copy what they see there. But this is really bad practice, so I always go back and manually change it to dynamically read the tool number from the tool's filename, which is how you should really be doing it.

[bmwcyclist]

Both of mine (LISACom and Atkinsonpoint) pull the prefix from progpathname at startup, so the tool number never lives in the code.


I am trying to make a standalone LOS installer that puts BBS/serial-downloaded tools on the desktop without Workshop.

I have a Pi running a LISA centric BBS for testing and if it's useful I will leave it up permanently.

Renumbering could ride along with it: the packager would scan the obj for the tool's own number string and the installer would refuse to renumber anything that has it baked in, rather than trying to patch bytes.

Tool number reservation coming in the other thread.I plan to keep the Apple suggested tool number format.

Also thinking about:

Games like reversi and a photo sliding puzzle.

Also on the modern computer side a LISAWrite document converter.