#Latest Projects
17 messages in this thread
I tried this once before, it seems like a good start for the new year…
There are a lot of people on here, many of whom I recognize by name. It
would be nice to see what types of projects you have worked on/put together
on the Amiga. Take a moment and tell us about your successes/failures(So
we know what not to try) in programming the Amiga…
Humm, one of those questions that deserves more than a quick answer… and
me with serious deadlines to face again (still?).
Hope this thread stays "alive" long enough for me to get back to it with
some answers/comments.
Happy New Year to you John.
-bill
Deadlines? as in trying to get real work done? That's a truely novel
concept…
Strange, isn't it? And, about everything that I can think of, and a few
that I hadn't are interrupting… heater went out this morning!
-bill
Happy to comment on what I've being doing John. This is my fourth
attempt at learning C, SAS/C, and AmigaDOS. Things are falling into place
easily and rapidly this time. I acredit two things to this; the experience
that is learnt using the machine and reading about it, and second Arexx. I
really believe the years programming this OS with Arexx has helped in
learning C. I feel the two languages are very close. My first projects
were the rewriting of Arexx utilities into cli based C programs.
I have just released a PD utility for ProWrite that will remove PWs
formating codes and yeild an ascii text file. Not much, but I'm proud of
it. Right after placing it on a BBS. It was brought to my attention that
I did not handle the short lines of a paragraph very well. I really didn't
handle them at all. So, into rewrite I went. I also wanted to add tab
selection to the next version. That is: allow the user to chose to leave
the '09'hex in, or to remove it, or to change it to spaces (number
selectable). I have finished with the first part. (changing tabs), but
reformatting the line for the added spaces is yet to be done.
I have placed this on the back fire to work on an Arexx program
dealing with music. The first thing that I have worked on is sending and
receiving messages in a C program that is maskgarading as a rexx program.
One week of reading and two days at the keyboard and I can report success.
Have found one thing that somebody may know differently about. You can not
call the C program from a host, such as ProWrite. You must use an Arexx
stub that will call the C code. Has anybody found this to be different?
Thats all I have to say. I will be back asking questions though.
-Tom
Sounds like you have a reasonable challenge to tackle. It is always
amazing that people actually expect your code to work under the strangest
of circumstances. (Who would have ever thought of a short line…)
I have also been working on interfacing executables to applications through
AREXX (specifically Turbotext) and I have found the same type of limitation
that you have hit – there really isn't a good way to get an application run
without having to go through the 'ADDRESS COMMAND' capability of AREXX.
This of course leaves you without the ability to get any reasonable results
from the program. (Bill, feel free to jump in any time here). One thing
that I had looked at was creating a rexx function host that sits in the
background to process messages and allow the application to get the options
results.
re The newest version of ARexx (1.20) actually recognizes dos return codes
from address command type calls. I have been doing alot of ARexx to C
conversions as well, many are for the Toaster, which acts like a funky fu
function host. One handy thing here was Eric Giguere's Arexx function host
program, which I use to print the messages I would be sending to the
toaster. Real handy for debugging. Maybe you could find a way of putting
an execute somewhere in the ARexx food chain.. i.e. when a command is'nt
recognized as an internal function, then isn't founs in rexx: with .rexx on
the end, it could be execute()'ed
. I'm not sure a f'n host would be the way to do this.
Are you sure that wasn't just something that came with 2.0 and not the 1.20
version of Arexx? I know that I can get return codes under 2.0 quite
easily.
Function hosts certainly are a way to look at things. The difficulty you
run into is that they have to be around all the time OR you have to run
into the problem of starting one up for a short term event and then somehow
guess when the port will become available. On some of the lower memory
configurations I haven't been very successful at this (especially when it
has to load from a floppy). Have you had any luck in this area?
I use the package from Bill Hawes, which includes such niceties as
waitforport, WShell, and execio. All of these help to alleviate the
problems involved in getting output back from programs.
-larry
Wshell certainly makes Rexx much nicer to use, but I am in the position of
having to support people with just the standard 2.0 distribution. Hmmm,
waitforport appears to be there but execio isn't.
Know what you mean about having to support thers without a program.
execio is MARVELLOUS.
-larry
I cannot strongly enough recommend WShell to people. It makes AREXX more
useable. The goodies that come with it make everything else more useable.
The DisplayHandler for the CLI windows gives scroll back and menus. You
get file name completion capability. You get PathHandler, which IMHO is
worth the price of the whole package if you have a sizeable HD and many
applications mounted. It is a very worthwhile goodie. I quayle er quail at
the thought of not having it.
{@_@}
WaitForPort is a little program for checking and waiting for a port name…
or you can poll the portlist returned by show(ports)..
Hi, John,
I don't know if this REALLY qualifies as amiga programming, but I'm
using mine to develop lens manufacturing calculations, for a rather large
application package… the production version(s) of my stuff run on HP
Unix machines, but I'm doing the development work on my amiga because my
employer has been too cheap to invest in any decent graphics. I have a
couple of #include files that are different between "work" and "home"
versions, and of course my front-end module is different (made with
GadToolsBox) and the graphic display only exists at home, but all the
tools and the main calculation routines are completely portable between
the two platforms (or at least they were the last time I synchronized…)
How refreshing to be able to experience that kind of portability!
(auto-piloted from)
JcP
That more than qualifies. Have you shown the 'cheap' Amiga version to
them? With some of the other discussions going on here, it might raise a
few eyeballs. I am curious, what type of HP workstation are we talking
here? If it is running X-windows, it should be pretty easy to move the
Amiga graphics over to it.
I hauled my system in to work & demo'ed the stuff in October. We're
supposed to be getting X-windows sometime soon. I'm not holding my
breath. Our end-users have little if any interest in the graphic stuff,
so it is seen primarily as a development tool, and the company I'm
working for is Notoriously stingy with same….
(auto-piloted from)
JcP
John Toebes/SYSOP 70007,3467 T.S5/C Programming Latest Projects
I didn't mean ignore your last message. My term program died and I have
been trying to resurrect it, to no avail. After useing automated programs
for Compuserve it's hard to go back to the old of doing things.
We were talking about Arexx and C macros:
My editor is CED. It calls macros through the cli. This allows it
to call both arexx and cli programs. When it first came out you had to
address the ced port for a return port from arexx, but in ver 2 this had
been changed. I have not noticed any slow down because of using the cli to
launch arexx macros and it has allowed me to re-write them into C with no
problem. I do notice a delay when using an arexx stub to call a C program.
Maybe this could be changed. Wonder if Bill is reading this.
-Tom