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[stepleton]

That's exciting to hear! Regarding LisaEm, I know older versions (1.2.6.2 and prior) have had a hard time running the Lisa Workshop (P/Cl)ascal compiler---perhaps newer versions do better.

You may find that different versions of the Workshop are better suited to developing for the ToolKit. 3.9, for example, may be so focused on Macintosh development that it has lost some compatibility. I don't know this to be the case, but I have encountered a similar problem with differences between floating point libraries---LisaMandelbrot will only link with earlier Workshops.

[berskyboy]

There aren't many Office System apps out there. The Lisa was designed with the idea of giving its buyers most of what they needed in one go---at least, I seem to remember Larry Tesler saying something like that in this video.

This didn't stop people from making a few apps here and there. Some of them are on bitsavers.

If you'd like to explore the Mandelbrot set very, very slowly, you can try out my LisaMandelbrot program. This has been written using the QuickPort library, a convenience library for turning full-screen Lisa programs that usually run in the Workshop into applications that can run under the Office System. As such, it's not very good.

If you're really feeling ambitious, you could try writing your own full-featured app using the Lisa ToolKit. The ToolKit (documentation here and here) even comes with about a dozen example apps that demonstrate some of the ToolKit's features and operating principles. They're not all that interesting, but one of them is a little piano keyboard that makes little beeps, which is fun...

I wanted to try and run some of these on LisaEm with Office 3.1, most of the disks are not recognized.  Do they need a special version of Lisa Office or do they need the Macintosh System software?  I would love to be able to create a simple program to open various Lisa Documents in 4 folders (depending on some logic or arbitrary value, but enough to say, a random Lisa Document),

thanks,
Mark

[rayarachelian]

I wanted to try and run some of these on LisaEm with Office 3.1, most of the disks are not recognized.  Do they need a special version of Lisa Office or do they need the Macintosh System software?  I would love to be able to create a simple program to open various Lisa Documents in 4 folders (depending on some logic or arbitrary value, but enough to say, a random Lisa Document),

There should be no issue installing Lisa Pascal Workshop, the issue is when you try to link any program that contains an if statement (or case statement), the linker will crash with "Bad Intrin Patch".
Note that LPW does not install on Lisa Office System, you'd create a new LisaEm preference i.e. creating a new virtual Lisa and then installing them like you're installing a new OS.The LPW disks will not work in LOS, though you might be able to share an application you created in LPW with LOS.

[berskyboy]

I wanted to try and run some of these on LisaEm with Office 3.1, most of the disks are not recognized.  Do they need a special version of Lisa Office or do they need the Macintosh System software?  I would love to be able to create a simple program to open various Lisa Documents in 4 folders (depending on some logic or arbitrary value, but enough to say, a random Lisa Document),

There should be no issue installing Lisa Pascal Workshop, the issue is when you try to link any program that contains an if statement (or case statement), the linker will crash with "Bad Intrin Patch".
Note that LPW does not install on Lisa Office System, you'd create a new LisaEm preference i.e. creating a new virtual Lisa and then installing them like you're installing a new OS.The LPW disks will not work in LOS, though you might be able to share an application you created in LPW with LOS.

Cool beans!  I did created another profile and load the software package.  And.... then I'm like where do I get documentation, example code, etc... I was like cool, but I'm missing something.  This is progress tho.  Any other hints would be great to get me writing my first pieces of Basic, (Pascal or Cobol), I've written in all of them, but that's as old as well, the Apple Lisa!

UPDATE, I found the manuals in the previous posts, I will go through them, but is there an quick and dirty example to get me running?

[rayarachelian]

UPDATE, I found the manuals in the previous posts, I will go through them, but is there an quick and dirty example to get me running?

Yes, yes there is! Pascal's the way to go. Documentation is up on BitSavers: http://bitsavers.org/pdf/apple/lisa/workshop_3.0/
Here are some modern notes on writing code on the Lisa. Good luck and looking forward to see what you do. Again, you'll run into linker issues unfortunately on LisaEm, but not on a real Lisa.

* https://github.com/steventroughtonsmith/LisaOSToolKitSample
* https://www.highcaffeinecontent.com/blog/20140527-Lisa-Pascal-Development-in-Lisa-Workshop
* https://macgui.com/news/article.php?t=477

[pat]

If you're really feeling ambitious, you could try writing your own full-featured app using the Lisa ToolKit. The ToolKit (documentation here and here) even comes with about a dozen example apps that demonstrate some of the ToolKit's features and operating principles. They're not all that interesting, but one of them is a little piano keyboard that makes little beeps, which is fun...

Please share the steps to install the ToolKit.
In here, the directories Package_1_Clascal and Package_3_Listings are empty. If someone downloaded the files inside those directories, please share them.
I could not find the dozen example apps, could someone tell their location or share them?
Thanks a lot!!!

[stepleton]

Hi Pat. I think the contents of the examples directory and the toolkit_university directory will have most of the documentation that you need (nearly everything except installation, I think); I don't recall seeing any other documentation on Bitsavers and think that those directories may have always been empty. (The examples directory PDFs talk about a lot more than examples.)

Within the examples directory, the document 04_Lisa_Toolkit_Self-Paced_Training.pdf presents a teaching curriculum that incorporates several of the example programs, if I remember correctly. (I might be wrong, it's been a while since I've looked into this).

I do see that the documents in the examples directory are numbered 01..12 and then there's a 17... I don't know where 13..16 have gone; I'm not sure I've ever seen them.

I've had a working installation of the ToolKit from disks here: http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/Apple/Lisa/toolkit_3.0/
Unfortunately I don't really recall what I did and kind-of figured it out as I went along. I think there was probably an installation script that you ran on one of the disks. I would set up a copy of the Workshop (3.0, not 3.9), insert the ToolKit_V3.0_1_9-1-84.dc42 disk image, and see what you can find.

Actually, yeah, looking at the disk image in lisafshtool, it seems there's a file called *Install.TEXT. I am pretty sure that this is a Workshop exec file and that you will run it by typing R (for Run) and then at the prompt <-#13-*Install.TEXT or something similar. (#13 means the floppy drive.)

Whatever the case, the examples can be found on these floppies, and there is some exec script that's part of the installation that will build an example for you. I forget the details of how it works.

Actually, yeah, wait. I forgot that I still had this up, too: http://stepleton.com/Lisa/clascal/
The Google Plus link is long dead, so no photos, but you can browse all of the example source code and download a floppy image with the compiled example programs (with icons made by me!). All of those Xfoo.TEXT files that you see are files that help configure the build script, I think.

Hope this helps; good luck!