Re: Developing Apple Lisa Office System applications?

From: Tom Stepleton <stepleton_at_email.domain.hidden>
Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 19:55:32 -0700 (PDT)


Well, it took a day later than I'd hoped, but you can now browse the ToolKit example source here:

http://stepleton.com/Lisa/clascal/

Enjoy!
--Tom

On Friday, October 24, 2014 11:00:58 AM UTC-4, Tom Stepleton wrote:
>
> 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> 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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Received on 2014-10-27 17:22:52

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