Category: Programming
Apple has released the latest version of their developers tool, XCode 4 on their developers website (http://www.developer.apple.com). Apple is no longer requiring that developers using the program have a developers membership to use XCode. It is even available from download from the Mac App Store for $4.99. The new version has a number of new features in it including: Single Window Apple LLVM Compiler 2.0 New Debugger Interface Builder is Built-in Fix-it and Live Issues Instruments for Xcode 4 Assistant…
A new way of writing Applesoft Basic programs has been created by Andres Lozano, known in the Apple ][ world as Loz. Virtual Basic is a complete BASIC with all of the same operators and commands as Applesoft, except that it is written in a style much like other high level languages of the modern era. The entire system for Virtual Basic is a series of python scripts. If you are writing Virtual Basic programs, they can written using…
This is largely a repeat of an article in an earlier issue of the magazine. It works across all forms of *NIX (including OS X) and in a limited way Windows as well. Most professional *NIX people don’t recommend it. The reasons escape me at the moment. One thought some network analysts had a couple of years ago as to the slow loading of web pages was due to mis-configured or slow ad servers. Visiting some pages with numerous popups…
Snippetspace, the company known for it’s eazy to use iPhone App framework, has released a preview of it’s next version of the package. iWebkit has been one of the most widely used frameworks for building iPhone Apps and iPhone compatible websits during the past few years. Its author, Christopher Plieger, is also taking dontations for the purchase of an iPad so that he can begin building a version of the iWebkit framework for the iPad. According to the release on…
These tips can be used with the OS X terminal, iTerm, and most Linux shells. I have also verified the history works with the Windows “DOS Prompt”. It’s nice when things work out in a consistent cross-platform way. 😉 The history feature is useful when a programmer wishes to perform similar commands over again. In the past the process used to be more complex. Now it’s as simple as using the up arrow key. The down arrow key works to…
In obvious preparation for next weeks release of the iPad2, Apple has released the iOS 4.3 Gold Master to its developers. With the new technologies implemented into the new iPad2, Apple is hedging its bets that one week will be enough for most developers to catch up on the Apps and get the new Apps into the App Store prior to the release of the iPad. There are sure to be a ton of new apps utilizing the cameras and…
The Mac has a unique way of setting up its $PATH variable. These are the locations the BSD portion of OS X looks at to find programs to run. In this case the list of paths can be found in the file /etc/paths. To edit it the administrator needs to sudo their favourite editor since the file itself is owned by root. For example “sudo pico /etc/paths”. This is useful for the programmer who wants to have their programs accessible…
Programmers are always looking for tools to make things easier. The Terminal program included with OS X is adequate. This alternative makes things a little less spartan. According to the documentation this is an active project where the author implements features from other shells. One thing I find useful is the use of the scrollwheel as the middle mouse button for copy and pasting selected text. It also uses PC (Linux) keybindings such as <Home> (beginning of the line) and…
Apple and the BSD folks have included two of the four editors as part of the base install packages. The first goes by two names and is accessed via the terminal (Applications –> Utilities –> Terminal). They are either pico or nano (note the lowercase). These are almost as basic as one can get and still refer to them as full screen editors. The other editor included by Apple is Textedit. This is entirely accessed by the GUI. It has…
There was an article in Wired Magazine Yesterday about Apple ][ software pioneer Bill Budge and his being awarded the 2nd annual Pioneer Award which is presented by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. You can check out the article in Wired at: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/01/bill-budge-pioneer/ Bill Budge is scheduled to present the 2011 KFest Keynote speech.
Over the years, there have been many programming languages, which have come and gone, sometimes in the blink of an eye. However, one programming language which has has a nice long legacy and continues to be used on some platforms today is the simple language Pilot. The language itself has come in several flavors over the years, both in full-blown compiler size and the mini size. N. Dealy programmed one of the first versions of Mini-Pilot in 1978. Scott Knaster…
Loading and Saving Graphics Screens on the Apple II Series Part 2 While last months article covered some nifty graphics manipulation techniques, I missed making a few points about some extremely important items which must be made in order to make our program work well. Every Apple II has some calls built in the rom of the machine which when called, perform tasks which we would normally have to assign basic statements to. A perfect example is the disk access…
with APW and Related Products A Survey of APW productsBy Mike Westerfield Like myself, many of you have been programming on the Apple II since it really was the Apple II – no plus, e, c, or GS. The first assembler I used on the Apple II was actually tape based. I break out in hives every time I remember that. As the Apple II grew, so did the languages that were available for it. First, better assemblers appeared, starting…
Product: Standard Apple Numerics Environment (SANE) Use: Numeric Calculation For: Apple II, III, Pascal Company:Apple Computer Inc. Includes: Documentation and disk Availability: Apple Computer Dealers Price: $35 By J.B. KoonsCall-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine July 1985 PP19-20 MORE and more often now we hear that the day of the lowly 8 bit microprocessor, such as the 6502 that sits at the heart of all Apple II and Apple III computers, is over. If you want to do real work you need a machine…
by James W. Thomas Call-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine July 1985 PP15-18 The Apple Numerics Group has been working for several yeors to implement state-of- the-art numerics on all Apple computers. The result of these efforts is calted SANE, for Standard Apple Numerics Environment. It is available for Pascal and assembly programmers on Apple II and III computers, and is the native arithmetic on Macintosh. Apple Works, MacPascal, MacBASIC, the Lisa Workshop, and several other Macintosh languages and application programs use SANE. This…
Text by Dave. Lingwood Programs by Brian Matthews (Action-Research NW) BASIC COMPARISONS Most Apple /// Business BASIC users also work with Applesoft, either from earlier ][ days, or through emulation mode. Business BASIC (hereafter “BB”) has all the professional features you need, but it lacks the flexibility provided by the openness of the ][. This article and attached programs recount some of the pitfalls we encountered and useful tricks devised in transferring a large statistical analysis package from Applesoft to…
Murray Arnow/Call -A.P.P.L.E. staff writerJune 1983 / PP 49-52 Apple CP/M is probably the least documented of the operating systems available to Apple users. With this in mind, I hope to share some of the information I have been able to gather on the 2-80 Soft Card and the associated Microsoft implementation of CP/M. Before I begin, let me urge the reader to refer to the series of articles by Gregg Tibbetts in Softalk magazine titled SoftCard Symposium. The latter…
by Val J. Golding Call-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine March 1983 PP81 CP/MUFFIN was a rush job. We had a story submitted to us on Wordstar on a CP/M formatted diskette. Fortunately for us, we had just published a story in the December Call -A.P.PL.E. by Art Messler, which pretty well explained the structure of a CP/M directory. As it turned out, the clues in that story were sufficient to start us on the right path. We were working in the dark, not…
A Call-A.P.P.L.E. Techniqueby Mat DavisCall-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine October 1982 PP17 One of the Apple’s strongest points is its ability to use multiple operating systems such as DOS 3.3 and Pascal. For someone who uses both of these operating systems, there are times when it would be convenient to have disks that both Pascal and DOS could use. Such a disk would be useful for individual users who are trading programs or for user groups who want to have some Pascal programs…
By Thomas G. WilliamsCall -A.P.P.LE. July 1982 PP79 THE Symbol Symon symbolic debugger is a major improvement over the capability included in the Apple ][ monitor. Unfortunately, it does not know about the Big Mac.LC assembler and thus can not save or use the symbol table produced by Big Mac.LC. Symbol Symon can be used without a symbol table, but you lose the capability to refer to locations by name instead of address. Fortunately, the Big Mac.LC symbol table is…
