Re: Creating a working semi-replica

Hi Brian,

Sounds like a fun project!

Is there any reason to use Pascal, other than the fact that most Lisa software was written in that language?

It seems to me like you could get further and have just the same interface using a programming language like Python. You'd also get more contributors that way.

I think what makes the Lisa Lisa-y are the human interfaces and the software interfaces. (That and being massively overengineered in just about every respect.)

>From the perspective of the user, the software would look and feel the same
regardless of the language used to implement the OS and the applications.

>From the perspective of the programmer: while Clascal was an important
development, my suspicion is that the design of the ToolKit and the other Lisa libraries were more important for the experience of Lisa programming than the language itself.

It would be fascinating to see a Python version of the ToolKit that had essentially the same API calls---you could do rapid prototyping of Lisa applications on modern hardware, then translate the Python to Clascal to run your code on the Lisa. You'd have to take responsibility for memory management during the translation, but I don't think that it would be too hard to add allocations and frees where needed. It might even be possible to write a Python->Clascal compiler to do most of the work for you.

I look forward to seeing what you make,
--Tom

On Wednesday, November 19, 2014 3:52:16 PM UTC-5, Brian Connors wrote:
>
> Hi, I'm new here. I recently contacted Ray Arachelian about running Lisaem
> on a Raspberry Pi, and he suggested I join the list so I can share what I'm
> doing with it. (I also have terrible follow-through when it comes to things
> like this, so I want to make sure that if I never quite finish it, someone
> else interested can.)
>
> The project is to create an approximate replica of a Lisa 2, and the
> project is called ALyX (Approximately Lisa on *niX - yes, a Half-Life 2
> reference, thus the superfluous y.) It's meant to include a few Unix
> utilities, including an environment manager called hvac to manage startup
> and hardware power button issues, a menu-driven, Lisa Workshop-like shell
> called lash, and a script implementing a simple form of stationery pad
> called stata. (So far only lash has been started. It's my first time coding
> in Pascal. I am not proud, but parts of it work.) There's also templates
> for parts of the outer shell of the case, although the exact plans are
> still in flux and I may not bother with a back panel, since I'll be using a
> USB hub as a backplane and they come in way too many shapes.
>
> You can find it at
>
> https://github.com/csyde/alyxproject
> https://github.com/csyde/alyxproject/releases
>
> (The templates are only downloadable from the release page.)
>
> So... let me know what you think, and I'd really appreciate code
> contributions, although I'm still trying to figure out github so I'll
> probably have to do any commits myself for the time being.
>
> Brian Connors
>
>

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