America Online APPLE II DEVELOPMENT FORUM CONFERENCE LOG Tuesday, April 28, 1992 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time Topic: Foundation & Resource Programming Forum Leader: Jay Fennelly (AFA Jay) AFA Jay Welcome to the Apple II Development Forum! AFA Jay Tonight we'll be discussing the new resource editing tool, Foundation, AFA Jay by Lunar Productions and also discussing resource programming in general. AFC SteveB (Jay is in charge of this conference....utoh :) AFA Jay }:> AFA Jay ^ just kidding :) AFA Jay With us is Marc (with a C) Wolfgram and Jim Murphy, two of the three AFA Jay working on the Foundation project. AFA Jay Mark (with a K) Collins is doing his laundry and may be along later :) AFA Jay Marc, would you like to start, explain what Foundation is and does... AFA Jay and give us an update on its progress :) M Wolfgram Sure - we were hoping to avoid "scenes from last months episode" but here goes... M Wolfgram We started the Foundation project about 14 months ago, hoping to provide a resource editor environment M Wolfgram that could be used bu programmers and non-programmers alike... a really useful tool for the developer M Wolfgram and a super safe resource twiddler for the general masses... M Wolfgram To this end we started designing an extensible shell with all sorts of neat ideas, including a host of M Wolfgram builtin "foundation tools" so others could easilly (?) write resource editor modules to plug-n-play M Wolfgram with the Foundation shell. Jim has put together a script driven editor and a fully-functional hex M Wolfgram editor as well... Mark is currently coding the primary graphics editors (windows, controls, menus..) M Wolfgram (Jim stop me please) GA AFA Jay :) AFA Jay Is the first Foundation release still planned for July '92? Jim Murphy 87 days :-) M Wolfgram Yes! Kansasfest '92 - then Foundation I (user machine) in Dec '92. M Wolfgram We felt that II should come out first :) AFL Marty What will Foundation cost? M Wolfgram Haven't stopped coding long enough to nail pricing down - ballpark $50..$75. M Wolfgram Too much? AFL Marty Nope... AFL Marty I don't think so. Sheppy Sounds good to me! AFA Jay I think that's reasonable, I'm sure it will be much better than that "other" AFA Jay resource editor ;) M Wolfgram We are doing EVERYTHING better that the "other" resource editor - including full 6.0 dependencies! AFC SteveB "The other leading resource editor" :) AFL Marty Brand-X Jim Murphy And, as a special bonus, our hex editor actually edits! :-) M Wolfgram BTW - they're done and you can cut a window to the clipboard and paste it back with ALL child resource M Wolfgram dependencies carried along!! AFL Marty Sounds pretty classy. M Wolfgram Change a resource ID and it's updated in its parent! AFA Jay That's great, it's really annoying running after pStrings all the time. M Wolfgram Delete a window and all those messy pStrings go away too! AFC DYAJim I have to say it.. AFC DYAJim It sounds like it's everything Genesys 2.0 should have been, and more :) AFC DYAJim }:> M Wolfgram (nasty) AFA Jay :) M Wolfgram Jim - Say a few words about the "new" script editor... Jim Murphy Well, since we last spoke, ScriptEdit's function has changed quite a bit, but it's mission remains... Jim Murphy the same. Jim Murphy ScriptEdit was to originally have a textual scripting language that was much like Rez. It also has... Jim Murphy a graphical "dialog builder" side for those who loath scripts. Both would allow you to quickly and Jim Murphy easily build templates that allow editing of virtually any resource type - Apple defined or custom. Jim Murphy Now, it simply has the graphical side of script creation. This makes for a much more powerful tool,... Jim Murphy as you will be able to create script-driven templates that really resemble native editors. This... Jim Murphy will include the ability to place fields wherever you want. It's also going to be much more flexible. Jim Murphy I guess that's it. GA AFA Jay Wow, that's great! AFA Jay If anyone has and questions about Foundation, now's the time to ask :) M Wolfgram Questions? M Wolfgram Wow - this is easy :) Want to talk about resources? AFA Jay If not, we'll open discussion up to general resource programming questions. Nuzz THere is a version of Foundation in the adv libraries, right :) M Wolfgram 1.0b7 - right! AFA Jay It's actually in the Lunar Productions Company Support Files area :) Nuzz I've used that to edit a few nasty resources I had lying around :) M Wolfgram what are "nasty" resources? Sheppy nas- T.E. resources? Nuzz Ones that had bad control lists :) AFL Marty Will Foundation do anything with Mac resources. M Wolfgram We will have some Mac Resource-Manager-like callbacks so editors can read mac resources. I don't M Wolfgram really see any usefullness in actually editing mac resources directly (as in Open mac file) GA AFL Marty I was thinking of minor stuff... editing the name and ID of TrueType fonts AFL Marty for instance. AFL Marty Or extracting them from a suitcase. AFC DYAJim A resoucespy type converter might be kinda cool to have all in one place AFC DYAJim (like copy mac ricons to the clipboard, then paste them as GS rIcons in AFC DYAJim another file) AFC DYAJim Or write out a font, or rsound or something M Wolfgram Good point Marty - Pointless has opened that camp up - A TrueType Editor could be implemented that M Wolfgram could work under the Foundation shell. ResourceSpy does neat things with Mac resources... An editor M Wolfgram will have the ability to access Mac resources too, but we're leaning toward "import mac menubar, etc." M Wolfgram GA Jim Murphy There are obviously lots of neat possibilities, it's just that we've obviously had to think quite a Jim Murphy bit about what we really want, need, and have time to do. AFL Marty Write the suggestion down in case you run out of things to do. :) M Wolfgram We will be running out sometime late september '93 :) GA AFC DYAJim Yes, mac importing would be cool. M Wolfgram Actually we've got great plans for intellegent import - paint files to rPictures, Mac resources, M Wolfgram Teach docs to LEText, etc. (but not by July :) AFL GaryJ I would think that nowdays Mac to IIGS conversion stuff would be a hot item. AFL Marty rFonts? M Wolfgram rFonts are defined by Apple, but nothing uses them yet. GA AFL Marty "yet" M Wolfgram Well, programs that include a "builtin" font could use an rFont instead of hard data. M Wolfgram GA Jim Murphy Except HexEdit, of course. Gotta' have that speed. :-) Sheppy Could use 'em for window & control icon fonts... AFC DYAJim ANSIEdit by James S WI uses an rFont for that AFC DYAJim for its own custom font AFC DYAJim it's pretty nifty:) Jim Murphy Oh, one note of caution to anyone who may use the currently available HexEdit. For resources larger Jim Murphy than 64K, HexEdit may act a bit "flaky". M Wolfgram (update will be out soon - right Jim?) Jim Murphy Yes, Marc. Soon. Classes and work first, right? :-) M Wolfgram Right! AFL GaryJ So, have you already talked about future features of Foundation? Jim Murphy :-) Jim Murphy The future - getting it finished! AFA Jay :) M Wolfgram That's right, Gary - Jim pointed out that we have roughly 87 days :) AFL GaryJ :) Jim Murphy Well, I mentioned that ScriptEdit has changed quite a bit. It no longer will have a scripting language AFL GaryJ (Future features forthcoming on Foundation - nice title for a chat :) Nuzz M Wolfgram The menu editor will let you drag items to other menus... Window editing is by mode - drag, order, M Wolfgram size controls, edit control colors, etc. Things you generally want to do to a group of controls! M Wolfgram Mike's doing a nice sound resource editor/hex debugger :) Jim Murphy Funny, funny Marc. :-) AFA Jay I have a rather strange Resource/Toolbox question... Jim Murphy Oooh, cool. AFL GaryJ Go for it, Jay AFA Jay I did a GetCtlHandleFromID() on a Text Edit control that came from a resource. AFA Jay It told me notExtendedCtlError AFA Jay NiftyList says it's an extended control. Jim Murphy Firstly. Did you check your parms right before the call was made. Just to be sure? AFA Jay Yes, I'm in the right window with the right ID. AFA Jay It was odd...I ended up just giving the TE Calls a nil, since there's only one AFA Jay TE, but still...it was strange. M Wolfgram How was the control resource created? M Wolfgram ID - is that the Control ID or the Resource ID you're passing to the call? AFA Jay It was created with Genesys, this is the first time I've had a problem AFA Jay with TE's. AFA Jay I checked it under Foundation, it looked alright. AFA Jay I was using, the...hmmm... AFA Jay the resource ID. M Wolfgram WRONG! Jim Murphy Wow. I heard that over here, Marc. :-) AFL GaryJ Are you filling in for Matt tonight, Marc? AFL GaryJ :) Jim Murphy I guess so. M Wolfgram The control ID is what the GetID call wants, needs, and otherwise likes a lot. Jim Murphy :-) Jim Murphy A fine way to put it. M Wolfgram That was my famous Matt DTS WRONG - I've delt with him recently :> Jim Murphy Actually, this is still a bit confusing. If you passed the resource ID which differs from the actual Jim Murphy control ID, and there is no such control with that ID, you should get $1009 - noSuchIDError. Nuzz If its a control hit, TaskData4 will contain the control ID AFA Jay But I didn't...it found the control... AFA Jay but complained that it wasn't an Extended control. AFC DYAJim maybe it turns out to be the id to another control AFA Jay There were two controls, a scroll bar and a TE. Jim Murphy These are both extended resource-based controls? AFA Jay yup :) AFA Jay The thing that really confused me was that Niftylist said it was extended... Jim Murphy Nifty-keen. M Wolfgram Genesys tends to set the ID of controls to the resource ID... Does the window contain other controls? AFA Jay It was just a window sized TE with a scroll bar AFA Jay Let me see if I can load these resource and not crash to see if the Ctl ID AFA Jay and Resource ID are the same. M Wolfgram Nice bug, Jay. (Hi Jeff) M Wolfgram I take back my WRONG :) M Wolfgram (replace it with lucky) AFL GaryJ :) AFL GaryJ But it was SO decisive! M Wolfgram The DTS and tool Gods are over on the "other" online service tonight - I haven't got any other ideas:( ChamlnSoft So, Marc & Jim, will there be more scripts available in Foundation soon? Jim Murphy Well, ScriptEdit is undergoing a radical change from what it currently looks like. The answer would be Jim Murphy most-likely no. ChamlnSoft Aw, Shucks ! :) M Wolfgram Jeff, just post what you need in the LP DC area and Jimm will pop 'em out as needed. Jim Murphy Yup, that's the best way to get my attention. ChamlnSoft I may just have a submission for your resource clearinghouse soon... AFA Jay Well, the answer wasn't there...the Resource ID and Control ID are the same :) ChamlnSoft What's the problem, Jay? Nuzz How are you getting the ID now Jay? AFA Jay I opened the resource fork... AFA Jay loaded the resource... AFA Jay and dumped it with NL: ) Nuzz (in your app I mean) AFA Jay Oh :) AFA Jay I'm not :) AFA Jay There's only one TE, so I just give it nil and it's happy :) AFC DYAJim So don't create extra work ;> Nuzz Now I'm confused. Give the ID nil? M Wolfgram On TE calls... AFA Jay TE Calls want a TEHandle... Nuzz But he said a Getctlhandle from ID call failed AFA Jay Right. Nuzz Are you passing nil as the ID? AFA Jay No, I'm passing the ID as the ID and my window as the window. AFA Jay and it tells me it's not an extended control. AFA Jay So to get around it, I passed nil to TE instead of the handle that GetCtlHndl.. AFA Jay would have returned me. Jim Murphy Regardless of what he's passing, the error being returned is what's strange... M Wolfgram Errors need to be investigated even if a workaround is available (ask me about AddResource :) Jim Murphy Or ask me and BCT. :-) ChamlnSoft Have you checked the moreFlags? Are all the required bits set? AFA Jay I glanced at them, I noticed something was there and figured it was right... AFA Jay I probably shoudln't trust Genesys that much? :) Jim Murphy RIGHT! Jim Murphy :-) ChamlnSoft Nope, if I remember right, it did have some errors in the TE stuff ChamlnSoft Kept me spinning for a week :( Nuzz I know when you save a TE as Orca code, it still thinks its a resource AFA Jay sorry, the moreflags are right :) ChamlnSoft Did you check the script vs. the rez template ? (for extra fields) ChamlnSoft Remember the list control, Marc :) AFA Jay Everything seems to be alright with the template... AFA Jay It's created fine and handled fine... AFA Jay it's just something's a little confused about its extendedness. M Wolfgram The really strange thing is that all TE controls are extended controls... M Wolfgram It works, so the template should be right... AFA Jay I'm going to create a new resource, maybe I'll use Rez, and see what happens :) M Wolfgram Sounds like a job for Dave Lyons. Warning on REZ and control lists --- the terminating null is added M Wolfgram by REZ and Genesys _and_ derez put it there on output - Genesys will crash with 2 null terminators! AFA Jay ouch :) AFL GaryJ Topic was resource programming (and Foundation) JLeathlean Ah... Something I've just really gotten into... JLeathlean What is the latest version of Genesys? AFC DYAJim 1.2.4 I think M Wolfgram 1.3 was temporarilly release about a year ago now. AFC DYAJim I never knew about that.. JLeathlean Temporarily? M Wolfgram Yes - crashed on source generation - I finagled a copy - repackaged 1.2.4. with the planned 2.0 menus. AFC DYAJim oh.. interesting! M Wolfgram 1.2.4 was the sanest release - the last serious bugs in the shell were killed. M Wolfgram Well Gary - I think that this is pretty much the trailings - Thanks Jay!