The Last Word 3.0 Release Candidate 1

[+Allan]

I was checking out YouTube tonight and it looks like one of the beta testers has welched on the NDA. Moreover, he seems to be passing LW off as his own work:

 

 

I know the culprit and I'll be having stern words with him!

Get that bastar --- hmm. Maybe he didn't sign the NDA A little forgiveness may be in order.

 

Stephen Anderson

Friggin A - MAZ - ING!

 

I can't wait to play with it.

 

Your video reminds me of Mr. Excel, the Excel teaching guy on the Net. Maybe you could do a few more videos demonstrating some of the more technical stuff with The Last Word.

 

I'm not sure how your going to top this but I have my hopes up high. Maybe you could do a poll on what people think is the most desirable piece of software they would want on the 8-bits. Then again maybe you got something in mind already.

 

Allan

[flashjazzcat]

Friggin A - MAZ - ING!

 

I can't wait to play with it.

 

Your video reminds me of Mr. Excel, the Excel teaching guy on the Net. Maybe you could do a few more videos demonstrating some of the more technical stuff with The Last Word.

 

I'm not sure how your going to top this but I have my hopes up high. Maybe you could do a poll on what people think is the most desirable piece of software they would want on the 8-bits. Then again maybe you got something in mind already.

Glad you enjoyed it. Actually I fully intend to make "proper" instructional videos for LW (probably using an emulator and Camtasia or Snagit). I really enjoyed some MSDN videos about VB I downloaded a couple of years back and these were along similar lines.

 

Funnily enough, the software looks much more impressive running on the 130XE than it does on the emulator, and it seems to run more smoothly, too.

 

I do have ideas for my next project, and I've made noises about it elsewhere on the forum. First, I have another programming job to do, though; something that will hopefully find a permanent home in a few months.

[flashjazzcat]

Design question:

 

I'm having a hard time deciding something. LW has a keyboard macro facility. One way of running a macro is to press "Escape", followed by the key the macro is attached to. "Escape" causes "Macro" to appear on the message line and it waits for you to press a key, then tries to find the macro on that key. I experimented this evening with putting the "Macro" prompt on the status line (akin to the "Ins" and "Upr" indicators) as "Mac", to remind the user momentarily that the next keystroke will run a macro. This worked well and looked good. I then reasoned that I could extend the idea to having "Mac" on the status line while a macro is running (and therefore reverting to the "Macro" prompt on the message line when first running the macro).

 

Given that you can also transparently run macros with <Option+Key> and even remap macros onto existing keystrokes, I'm in two minds as to whether "Mac" should remain on the status line while a macro is running. In one way, it's a helpful reminder that you're in the middle of an automated sequence. On the other hand, it detracts from the idea that a macro should appear as a "seamless" extension to the existing command set. What to do?

Edited September 18, 2009 by flashjazzcat

[spookt]

I think the indicator on the status line sounds good. I guess it's fairly unobtrusive? I don't think it would detract from the transparency of the macro. Perhaps you could post a screenshot?

[flashjazzcat]

Better still, a video (right click, Save As).

 

Movie_0002.wmv

 

What I've done here is write a macro (which is actually visible on the screen) which redefines the cut and paste keys so they're the same as the Windows variants (CTRL+X, CTRL+C, CTRL+V). These macros sepercede the built-in commands so you can really remap the entire program if you want. This is where I wondered if the "Mac" indicator was defeating the object somewhat. Anyway, in the video, I first press <Start> to invoke the menu I've written (attached to the hash key macro), then I mark a block of text and do some cutting and pasting with the redefined keystrokes.

 

You can also see that the space where "Mac" appears in the middle of the status line niftily gets used by "Mrk" (for block marking) and "Esc" as well. There's a system of priorities here, and it works out well, since "Esc" and "Mrk" will temporarily supercede "Mac" during macro execution, and in normal use, "Esc" cancels block marking, so those two are mutually exclusive.

[flashjazzcat]

Fairly happy with the macro indicator at the moment, so I've moved onto testing the extensions. There were lots of bugs, but I finally got them ironed out and converted the source code to one of the old 2.1 extensions: a calculator. Extensions are small (up to 3.5K) object files which load at $3006 and have a table of vectors that the main program looks at when you press certain keys, etc, bringing additional functionality to the program. Among the extensions I've already written are an icon menu bar, a character map, a program to load SDX directory listings into the editor, and a program to load another application.

 

I left extensions till last because they rely on absolute addresses in the main program, and any maintenance releases of the core code will require re-assembly of all the add-in modules.

 

Calculator.wmv

 

Here, I've typed out a sum in the editor. I load the "CALC.EXT" extension (which actually autoruns, but I cancel it), then I copy and paste the sum into the calc command (on <CTRL+T>). You can load different extensions at any time, and there's an "unhook" vector, so an extension can undo any hacks it has made to the main program before the next one is loaded. It would be quite feasible, for example, to write a command processor interface if you like Protext on the ST.

Edited September 20, 2009 by flashjazzcat

[NML32]

Looking great. I really like the new updates.

 

BTW,

Thanks for the video updates.

 

 

Fairly happy with the macro indicator at the moment, so I've moved onto testing the extensions. There were lots of bugs, but I finally got them ironed out and converted the source code to one of the old 2.1 extensions: a calculator. Extensions are small (up to 3.5K) object files which load at $3006 and have a table of vectors that the main program looks at when you press certain keys, etc, bringing additional functionality to the program. Among the extensions I've already written are an icon menu bar, a character map, a program to load SDX directory listings into the editor, and a program to load another application.

 

I left extensions till last because they rely on absolute addresses in the main program, and any maintenance releases of the core code will require re-assembly of all the add-in modules.

 

Calculator.wmv

 

Here, I've typed out a sum in the editor. I load the "CALC.EXT" extension (which actually autoruns, but I cancel it), then I copy and paste the sum into the calc command (on <CTRL+T>). You can load different extensions at any time, and there's an "unhook" vector, so an extension can undo any hacks it has made to the main program before the next one is loaded. It would be quite feasible, for example, to write a command processor interface if you like Protext on the ST.

Edited September 20, 2009 by NML32

[flashjazzcat]

I'm happy to report that after some last-minute experiments with DOS 2.5 and MyDOS RAMdisk handlers, LW 3.0 now auto detects RAMdisks under these DOSes and configures extended memory accordingly without any need for manual configuration. There was a bug in LW's bank selection routines which wouldn't have been found without this extra research, so it's all good. LW will run quite happily next to MyDOS and standard DOS 2.5 RAMdisks "out of the box". Other (unsupported) operating systems will require manual configuration, although I'll happily release maintenance updates for other DOS packages by request.

 

I know the release date for LW keeps slipping, but it's really been for the best in this case.

 

 

 

[flashjazzcat]

The Last Word 3.0 is to all intents and purposes finished; just need a few days to finish the manual and then it'll be available on my website. Rather than spend time writing loads of macros, etc, prior to releasing the software, I'll release separate a "toolkit" next month, which will be a good opportunity to address any bugs which have cropped up, etc. There'll be a set of extensions which I'm working on, too, plus the VBXE2 version, so lots to keep me busy on the run up to Christmas. I'm back in full-time work (for a few months) as of tomorrow, so I'm glad I got the application finished during the break. Amazing that it's taken 3-4 hours a day every day for the past week to finally get the RAM detection system working the way I always wanted it to, but it did involve disassembling chunks of two disk operating systems so no wonder, really.

 

 

 

[flashjazzcat]

I'm going to release LW on or before Thursday this week. Nine months in development is long enough.

 

http://www.atari8.co.uk/

[flashjazzcat]

Pleased to report I'm almost back to full health after my week long flu; been frantically coding all afternoon. Program is done, but some changes are needed to the manual. I've placed all the memory configuration options in a new file called "LW.SYS". These settings can't be changed once the program has loaded, so it seemed to make sense to keep them separate from the config file. I got all this coded up this afternoon, and that freed up some space so the print preview screen now displays the name of the file being printed at the top. This is useful when "including" text banks or external files, since if a formatting error aborts the print operation, you can see which file contained the error.

 

The new LW.SYS file will have to be documented in the manual, and once that's done, the program will be released some time this week.

Edited October 4, 2009 by flashjazzcat

[+Stephen]

Can't wait! So - when will you be doing the VBXE updates

 

Stephen Anderson

[flashjazzcat]

So - when will you be doing the VBXE updates

Pretty much as soon as the standard version is finished and released. Two versions need to be fundamentally identical (apart from the display driver), so I wouldn't want to be developing and bug fixing two versions at once.