COMPILING UTILITY PROGRAMS

[sparkdrummer]

As a long time TI'er I have always looked for ways to speed up the utility programs I use frequently.

 Two I have always used to speed up XB programs are:

XBASHER

PRE-SCAN IT!

There are others

 

I also use many XB based programs that were written specifically for Page Pro. A few are:

PAGE PRO FX

PAGE PRO STRIPPER

PAGE PRO FLIPPER

PAGE PRO ROTATE

There are others, these are ones I use frequently.

I think some have imbedded assembly code. Can the compiler handle imbedded assembly?

 

I ain't much on programming or using the wonderful compiler by Senior Falcon. I can barely edit a newsletter every month.

 

Anyway, is there anyone that would want to have a go at compiling these (and others) for your friendly neighborhood newsletter editor?

If so, I'd be glad to upload dsks of the programs I use for your perusal.

 

Yeah, I know, they ain't games....

[+arcadeshopper]

As a long time TI'er I have always looked for ways to speed up the utility programs I use frequently.
 Two I have always used to speed up XB programs are:
XBASHER
PRE-SCAN IT!
There are others
 
I also use many XB based programs that were written specifically for Page Pro. A few are:
PAGE PRO FX
PAGE PRO STRIPPER
PAGE PRO FLIPPER
PAGE PRO ROTATE
There are others, these are ones I use frequently.
I think some have imbedded assembly code. Can the compiler handle imbedded assembly?
 
I ain't much on programming or using the wonderful compiler by Senior Falcon. I can barely edit a newsletter every month.
 
Anyway, is there anyone that would want to have a go at compiling these (and others) for your friendly neighborhood newsletter editor?
If so, I'd be glad to upload dsks of the programs I use for your perusal.
 
Yeah, I know, they ain't games....

You'll get faster service by attaching or linking to the programs

Sent from my LM-V600 using Tapatalk

[sparkdrummer]

Well, by golly, I’ll upload some dsks tomorrow morning. 

[senior_falcon]

9 hours ago, sparkdrummer said:

There are others, these are ones I use frequently.

I think some have imbedded assembly code. Can the compiler handle imbedded assembly?

 

Yes "Juwel" can handle embedded code. As usual, there are limitations. Numbers passed to the assembly routines must be integers. Returns from the assembly subroutines must be via

B @>006A  or B @>0070.  On the XB side, remember that the only disk access if for Display/Variable files.

So there is a reasonable chance these can be compiled.

[sparkdrummer]

Here is a dsk with some utilities I use all the time. Catalog has short comment on what they are.

Anyone want to help an old phart in phoenix?  

UTILITYS1.DSK Utility1 catalog.pdf

[Airshack]

On 6/20/2021 at 5:12 PM, senior_falcon said:

Yes "Juwel" can handle embedded code.

Is the Jewel release out?

[senior_falcon]

In BETA. There is a minor change that I will release soon.

[sparkdrummer]

Burp…

 

Oops, I mean bump. 
 

I see the dsk has been downloaded a few times. No go on compiling, eh?

 

 

[senior_falcon]

I have just looked at a few of these, but at a glance there are a few complicating factors.

PreScanIt uses DEF which is not supported by the compiler.

It looks like PSI uses embedded code, but I'm not 100% sure about that. In any case there is a CALL INIT and some CALL LOADs . I think the compiler ignores CALL INIT and it is not likely that CALL LOADs will be useful because the memory is not arranged the same as XB.

PSI has been pre-scanned. The compiler expects to see executable XB statements so this line crashes:

2 GOTO 100 ::A$,DT$,EXTERN$,I$,K$,LL$,O$,OB$,Q$,R$,S$,SL$,T$,TEN$,U$

Stretcher uses a file type of Internal Fixed 13.  The only file type supported is Display Variable.

 

And so on. It is quite possible that these can be compiled, but not without making some changes. It is not simply a matter of running them through the compiler.

 

[sparkdrummer]

Thanks for looking them over Harry. 
I’ll try and eliminate the prescan and see if they still function. 
If they do, I’ll upload them and beg some more. 
 

[senior_falcon]

It looks like PreScanIt is a simple XB program. All disk access is display variable. With a quick once through I could not see any decimal points. Get rid of the pre scanned lines, and find a way to get substitute something that can be compiled for the DEFs (probably either GOSUB or a custom CALL) and I think it has a good chance of working.

[Ed in SoDak]

I take it you included PreScanIt and XBasher not so much to be compiled, but to show the programs you typically use to speed up other XB programs. The programs you hoped to compile would be the Pape Pro utilities, correct? Or am I wrong about that?

 

It didn't look to me that the PP utilities you included had been run through PSI or XBasher. Doing so might make a couple of them get to the main menu quicker at least. They might do their tasks a little faster too. Compiling them would probably get the most bang for the effort.

 

I use Compress, similar to your XBasher/PSI with a few differences. I've never run Page Pro though, nor have I tried the compiler yet. I'm just checking to see which of the programs you hope could be compiled.

[sparkdrummer]

Yes, I use Page pro utilities the most. 

[Ed in SoDak]

I downloaded Juwel and took a shot at Headliner. I got it to compile no errors with minor changes to remove decimals in the Call Wait routine. The resulting program did not run, just a blue screen. I'll take another shot at it. Been wanting to try out Senior Falcon's excellent program for awhile and this was a good excuse to dive in.

 

Your Utility disk didn't include any of the fonts shown in the program defaults. I know zip about Page Pro and so grabbed a few downloads and did quick some reading. It's not an easy program to figure out in a slapdash method. Then I decided to just try to compile something without being able to do much beyond making it run.

-Ed

[sparkdrummer]

Thanks for looking Ed in SoDak. 
I believe I’m just just going to hang with the utilities the way they are. 
They work, so I’ll just be happy that they’re a bit slow. 

[senior_falcon]

8 hours ago, Ed in SoDak said:

I downloaded Juwel and took a shot at Headliner. I got it to compile no errors with minor changes to remove decimals in the Call Wait routine. The resulting program did not run, just a blue screen. I'll take another shot at it. Been wanting to try out Senior Falcon's excellent program for awhile and this was a good excuse to dive in.

 

Your Utility disk didn't include any of the fonts shown in the program defaults. I know zip about Page Pro and so grabbed a few downloads and did quick some reading. It's not an easy program to figure out in a slapdash method. Then I decided to just try to compile something without being able to do much beyond making it run.

-Ed

I took a look at headliner and found the reason you were hanging at the blue screen was an instruction in 210: "ON WARNING NEXT"

With this (and the decimal points in the delays) removed the program starts up properly and you can navigate the menu.

The next problem that is much harder to fix is the use of INTERNAL,RELATIVE files and in at least one place RELATIVE, INTERNAL, FIXED 13.

Only DISPLAY,VARIABLE files can be used.

There are also some ON ERRORs, which can only be used in disk access. (I think in this program that is the only place they can be used, so that might be OK)

The file types are the real killer here and I don't know if there is a decent fix for that.

 

The manual for the compiler does not clearly state that ON WARNING and ON ERROR are not supported, so I need to do a little more work on that document.

[Ed in SoDak]

Thanks much for that! I was just about to try again so you saved me the inevitable fail. The PP Utility programs do have good error trapping, that could be worked around with parsing the inputs. But the IR/IF file type is indeed a deal breaker, since that's the native file format for PagePro itself and as such is set in stone. That likely shoots down the other utilities too, since they're all manipulating PP fonts or images in one way or another.

 

I really didn't read too deeply in the docs, just dove in for trial by fire. To your credit, it was pretty painless with the automated prompts taking me by the hand.

-Ed

Edited July 20, 2021 by Ed in SoDak