Tool Number List

[warmech]

Should we also list what project folks are working on to avoid duplicating efforts?

I think that would be a good plan!

Mine from before and another one that I hope to have finished in the next few weeks (that have tool numbers):

• T69105 - PRISM : A Z-Machine interpreter for LOS (V3-V5 story files supported, maaaaaybe V6 if I feel like hating myself enough). Paired with Tara McGrew's ZILF, you can write your own Infocom-esque text adventures and play them on the Lisa! The 69105 number is an inside joke that showed up in a lot of Infocom games.
• T69106 - Frisket : Might as well just start at 69105 and go from there. Frisket is a secret project; I hope to unveil it in the next few weeks or so. Alex has seen it, so he can vouch for its existence, lol. If you know what a frisket is and what industry it's used in, you might have an inkling what this program relates to.

General utilities I need to publish:

• Icon Editor (web-based): allows you to create icon files fully compatible with the LOS format, because the toolkit icon editor is absolute garbage.
• Interface Mock-Up Editor (web-based): I find it tough to visualize how info/fields/objects in a window should be laid out, so this helps. It's a drag and drop WYSIWYG thing to let you lay out QD objects in a window and generate coordinates and definitions for everything to just slap into your program. No real code is generated, it just spits out what things are and where they go; you still have to write the Pascal to make them do things. I'd like to change that at some point, but that's waaaaaaay down at the bottom of my list of stuff to look into doing.
• UUENCODE/UUDECODE: I slapped these together as a quick and dirty means of getting binary files back and forth between the Workshop and my main development machine. I'll get these cleaned up and documented and publish the source in the next few days or so.
• Frisket-related utility that I won't go into yet...

Other stuff:

• Another secret project... Alex is getting a demo of it tonight in its current (very much beta) state.

Aw heck, I'm gonna go post a thread about what Frisket's for. There won't be a lot of details and it'll be a bit of a tease, but I think it's cool and folks will like it.

[stepleton]

(in re everyone choosing T2xx tool numbers) Perhaps it was a latent appreciation for the 16-bit variants of the transputer...

[Eschaton]

It isn't clear how Apple intended to manage Lisa tool numbers to prevent collisions, but we can try to minimize them by keeping track of what has been used.

Apple exercised extremely strict control over who was allowed to develop for Lisa: Even people who bought Lisa Pascal Workshop, Lisa BASIC, Lisa COBOL, and Lisa C weren't treated as "full" Lisa developers, they could only really target the Workshop environment. To get access to the full set of Lisa units, you had to have a corporate entity that could enter into a contract with Apple (including a confidentiality agreement) and have a business plan for a product approved by Apple. Then you were allowed into the developer program and got access to the Office System units and the Lisa Application ToolKit.

This is also how Apple initially ran Mac development; however, Apple started opening up development not long after the Mac shipped, and lots of tools sprouted since Inside Macintosh contained everything one needed to know to write software for it.

[bmwcyclist]

I have run into an odd problem.

After changing the tool number for my app it no longer allows me to copy it from a floppy to another profile image. It just hangs or gives me a "The Lisa is having technical difficulties accessing 'LISACOM" ON "Diskette" message.

Any ideas?

[bmwcyclist]

the toolkit icon editor is absolute garbage.

Can you please tell me more about this tool?

[warmech]

the toolkit icon editor is absolute garbage.

Can you please tell me more about this tool?

I believe it's on ToolKit disk 1 - ICONEDIT.OBJ. It's not a very friendly interface. There's no grid or coordinate indicator for positioning pixels exactly where you want/need them to be and clicking both draws and deletes pixels, so if you misclick (there's no undo), you can really mess up a drawing. It must have been an absolute pain to draw all the original icons on it.

[bmwcyclist]

the toolkit icon editor is absolute garbage.

Can you please tell me more about this tool?

I believe it's on ToolKit disk 1 - ICONEDIT.OBJ. It's not a very friendly interface. There's no grid or coordinate indicator for positioning pixels exactly where you want/need them to be and clicking both draws and deletes pixels, so if you misclick (there's no undo), you can really mess up a drawing. It must have been an absolute pain to draw all the original icons on it.

Thanks! Does it allow you to "install" the icons? Any documentation?

[AlexTheCat123]

Thanks! Does it allow you to "install" the icons? Any documentation?

They get auto-installed for you. When you run ICONEDIT, you just specify the tool number that you want to create/edit the icon for, and it makes a file called {Txxx}ICON where xxx is the tool number. The Office System shell automatically picks up that file and displays it as the icon without you having to do anything extra.

[bmwcyclist]

Thanks! Does it allow you to "install" the icons? Any documentation?

They get auto-installed for you. When you run ICONEDIT, you just specify the tool number that you want to create/edit the icon for, and it makes a file called {Txxx}ICON where xxx is the tool number. The Office System shell automatically picks up that file and displays it as the icon without you having to do anything extra.

Nice! I just tried it, and it fixed many of the issues I was having. The document frame is a bit restrictive... but it works.

[warmech]

Nice! I just tried it, and it fixed many of the issues I was having. The document frame is a bit restrictive... but it works.

Yeah, it's a teeny tiny segment of your icon, which sucks, but I imagine they did that to not confuse users about whether they were interacting with the original application versus a piece of stationery. Regardless, it feels like you really are just designing an icon for the document frame rather than the application as a whole.