Re: Developing Apple Lisa Office System applications?

Hi folks,

Last night I managed to get all of the Lisa example programs to compile and run under the Office System.

I've linked to a disk image containing all the compiled programs at http://stepleton.com/Lisa/clascal/ . It's in MacBinary II format, but utilities exist to decode that in OS X (already installed), Linux (look for the "macutils" package), and Windows (left as an exercise). Give the programs a try---enjoy seeing your Lisa do something (slightly) different!

You can see screenshots of all the example programs here: https://plus.google.com/photos/+TomStepleton/albums/6075779489458024657

*Lessons learned:*

*(Disclaimer: these lessons assume you are like me and had the Office System and the Workshop installed on separate disks. If you installed both on the same disk, I'm not sure what happens, but I'm guessing that there are even more things to go wrong.)*

1. When the ToolKit v3.0 installation disks (at http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/bits/Apple/Lisa/toolkit_3.0/) ask you whether you'd like to install TKLIB.OBJ or TKLIB2.OBJ, *say no*. If you compile against these versions of the ToolKit, the binaries won't work with version 3 of the Office System. Worse yet, if you are using Workshop v3.9, the new INTRINSIC.LIB files that get installed will not be compatible with other libraries that the Workshop uses, and the Workshop will crash when it tries to boot.
2. If you're using v3.0 of the Workshop, don't go crazy with making subdirectories (called "Catalogs" in Lisa parlance) to hold the example programs---or if you do, give them very short names. It looks like the workshop shell and some of the tools have some very short buffers for storing filenames, and you may find that Weird Things happen. (E.g. if you set your working directory to one of your subdirs, you can get the FILE-MGR to print gobbledygook characters when it tries to tell you where you are. Scary! This problem seems to have been fixed in 3.9.)
3. You will need to install the QuickDraw (QD/*) libs, TKLIB.OBJ, TK2LIB.OBJ, and the InstallTool.obj program from the Workshop install disk with all the QuickPort stuff on it. Just use the B{ackup} command from FILE-MGR---there's no install script.
4. ToolKit disk 3 has an icon editor program, which is fun to play with.

*Still not known, because I haven't tried:*

1. The QuickPort TK*OBJ libraries are smaller than the ones that the ToolKit disks want to install. What's the difference? Is it still possible to compile a ToolKit program with these libraries that has luxurious debug facilities described in the ToolKit documentation?
2. If you stick to the QuickPort TK*OBJ libraries, can you compile an Office System compatible ToolKit program in Workshop 3.9? I would have guessed "no", but I've built a QuickPort application successfully under 3.9, so I'm not sure.

--Tom

On Monday, October 27, 2014 10:28:45 PM UTC-4, Lincoln Roop wrote:
>
> Tom,
>
> Thanks a lot for doing this. This makes browsing these files a lot easier
> while reading the PDF documents that David pointed me to.
>
> On 10/26/2014 10:55 PM, Tom Stepleton wrote:
>
> 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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