Re: Developing Apple Lisa Office System applications?

I have just started playing around with this myself. It's really interesting stuff!

*BEGIN IMPORTANT WARNING* If you intend to start building LOS apps with the ToolKit, you will need to install the ToolKit onto an existing instance of the Workshop using the install disks you can find on
bitsavers: http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/Apple/Lisa/toolkit_3.0/ .

This installation supplies the ToolKit static libraries TKLIB.OBJ and TK2LIB.OBJ. In so doing, though, it overwrites your workshop's INTRINSIC.LIB file.

I expect this is OK if you have Workshop 3.0. However, if you have the workshop 3.9 update
(http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/Apple/Lisa/workshop_3.0/, bottom) installed, you'll find that the Workshop will fail to boot after you install the ToolKit!

I'm pretty sure that this is because the INTRINSIC.LIB file supplied by the ToolKit does not account for a new intrinsic library (think shared library, or DLL) installed by the 3.9 update, and since the 3.9 workshop shell depends on this new library, it can't run. So the Lisa reboots.

My workaround was to boot another instance of the Workshop from another disk, then repeat the 3.9 update installation on the disk where I had installed the ToolKit. Things seem to work now.

When I did the original, ill-fated ToolKit install on top of 3.9, the Workshop didn't die immediately. You *might* be able to get away with starting with a fresh 3.9, installing the ToolKit, then immediately installing the 3.9 update again. I don't know if this will work, though, and luckily for me, I had another disk with the Workshop installed that I could boot for the repair.

*END WARNING* The ToolKit disks have a lot of interesting example programs on them. I was planning to copy them all off of my Lisa this Saturday and put them somewhere where they could be viewed online. If I do, I'll let you know.

*BEGIN SLIGHTLY LESS IMPORTANT WARNING* It seems to me that our dear old Lisas may be susceptible to their own version of "DLL Hell <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLL_Hell>", in that there doesn't seem to be any framework in place for managing the versioning of various libraries. During my installation mix-up, I noticed that TKLIB.OBJ and TK2LIB.OBJ on my messed-up disk were about a month older and a third larger than those same libraries on my "rescue" disk.

I'm not sure why these libraries should have changed so much in a month. My hypothesis is the following:

Messed-up disk: full version of the ToolKit libraries, as installed from by the ToolKit installation disks, with all the built-in hooks for debugging, etc. (The debugging stuff is pretty cool---see the manuals on bitsavers.)

Rescue disk: stripped-down version of the ToolKit libraries, containing mostly what's necessary to build QuickPort programs.

*END WARNING* --Tom

On Friday, October 24, 2014 9:53:11 AM UTC-4, Chandra wrote:
>
> I think it would be a lot of fun just writing a simple 'hello world' type
> of program and running it on lisa.
> It would interesting to see the differences in today's programming vs.
> Lisa in 1982. Yes, I am geek :-)
>
> -Chandra
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 9:48 AM, <lincol..._at_email.domain.hidden <javascript:>>
> wrote:
>
>> David,
>>
>> Thanks for taking the time to write such an informative response and
>> point me to these resources. If I am able to produce something, I will
>> definitely make a post about it here. I'm glad that the documentation and
>> disk images still exist, tracking down resources for older platforms can be
>> quite challenging.
>>
>> On Thursday, October 23, 2014 6:01:10 PM UTC-4, DAVID T CRAIG wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello Lincoln,
>>>
>>> Developing Apple Lisa desktop tools requires the APPLE LISA TOOLKIT.
>>> Documentation and disk images for this may be found at:
>>>
>>> http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/apple/lisa/toolkit_3.0/
>>>
>>> The Lisa Workshop development environment is needed for Toolkit
>>> development. The toolkit is based on an extended version of the Pascal
>>> language called Clascal which added object-oriented programming to the
>>> Apple Lisa Pascal language. Clascal is documented in the above
>>> Bitsavers.org web site. I used the Toolkit long ago and found it very
>>> powerful, but you have to read a lot to understand what you need to know
>>> given the object libraries are rather extensive. Apple provides a very good
>>> introduction to Clascal.
>>>
>>> I have attached 2 articles about the Toolkit and Clascal which may be
>>> useful. Some other Lisa stuff is also provided that may interest you too.
>>>
>>> Apple also provided what was called QUICK PORT that allowed you to
>>> create programs for the Office System Desktop environment, but Quick Port
>>> was not as versatile as the Toolkit. But Quick Port was easier to use if
>>> your program's desktop requirements were not extensive. I also believe
>>> Quick Port did not provide access to the Toolkit libraries. I recall Quick
>>> Port was documented in the Lisa Operating System reference manual set (3
>>> volumes).
>>>
>>> I've also BCCed one of the Lisa Toolkit's authors in case he has
>>> anything to add or correct any mistakes here.
>>>
>>> Hope this helps. If you actually produce a Lisa Toolkit tool please let
>>> me and this LisaList know.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> David Craig
>>>
>>> ===
>>>
>>> On October 23, 2014, at 12:08 PM, lincol..._at_email.domain.hidden wrote:
>>>
>>> > I'm interested in learning about what it would take to write a Lisa
>>> application that would actually be recognized by and run inside the Office
>>> System instead of the Programmer's Workshop. I've read some documentation,
>>> and see in an old notice to potential third-party developers, Apple
>>> mentioned the future existence of an "Application Developer's Toolkit" that
>>> would allow this, due to be available in late 1983. Did this product ever
>>> actually get released?
>>>
>>> --
>> --
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>
>

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