In the last few days, following the new downgrade protection discovery in OS 3.0.2, some infos leaked here and on TI-BANK seemed to indicate that there might be an official software development kit made by Texas Instruments at the horizon.
-First of all, after OS 3.0.2 caused a scandal with its Lua blocking and anti-downgrade protection, TI-BANK posted
this news article. In summary, what it says is that
many TI-BANK developers were recently contacted by Texas Instruments and that they would be allowed to beta-test a pre-release of a tool allowing people to create TNS files that includes Lua code. However, TI doesn't want them to tell any more information for now.-Afterward, the TI-BANK team launched a new website called
Inspired-Lua, meant to be a neutral reference for TI-Nspire Lua programming. It will include both French and English documentation. At this point, TI-BANK also
revealed extra informations regarding Lua and what TI told them:
There is nothing confidential about Nspire Lua documentation and releasing tools generated with the beta-testers version of the tool discussed about would be allowed.-Next, on Omnimaga, ExtendeD
discovered a website hosting a tool to generate Lua files, along with plenty of Lua samples for the TI-Nspire.
Those files were apparently not meant to be made publicly available. The related page and files were taken down, but most tns samples remained online.
It appeared that the samples might have been produced using an actual SDK, which is currently not available for the public.-And today, TI has allowed them to
host two of the Lua samples from there on TI-BANK, after TI-BANK team asked them permission.
It seems that TI could possibly be re-opening the door to third-party development on their calculators and it seems like there could be an official SDK at the horizon!
Here comes a new problem, though: Texas Instruments is a company and companies' main goal is to make money. Because of the growing interest towards Nspire development and the arrival of the TI-Nspire CX, could they be eventually attempting to put the Lua SDK for sale, trying to make money from TI community developers?
It seems very likely, because
back in 1999, this is exactly what they did with the TI-83 Plus: First of all, a 8 KB executable code limit was added to 8xp assembly files, a limit that was not present in Flash applications (8xk). Secondly, the TI-83 Plus Flash Debugger (the name of the SDK) costed money. Basically, this meant that to create programs using more than 8 KB of executable code, you were pretty much forced to pay for TI's software (no, Crabcake did not exist back then, unfortunately)! As a result, most large ASM games like RPGs were severely limited in content and lenght and since the average calculator programmer still goes to school and have no way to buy softwares online, very few people in the TI community programmed Flash Applications.
Eventually, the SDK became free, but today, in this era of iDevices, gaming console online services and online software downloads, creating small application and games for those devices became very popular, and it could be very possible that TI decides to test this market with the TI-Nspire series in the future. The problem, though, is that if a TI-Nspire SDK was not free, then a lot of people in the TI community, especially Omnimaga, which got a younger userbase in general, would not even be able to grab it, as they would not have a credit card or even money to afford it, not to mention that not everyone might be willing to spend extra money to develop calculator games. Also, how much would such SDK cost? Knowing TI, I am quite worried that the price would be in the high hundreds of bucks...
If the SDK ever becomes a reality and becomes available for free or for any TI-Nspire owner, then a whole load of new possibilities will open for the TI community, even if it's not the full power of assembly and C. If it has a price, however, then I guess the community will still need to constantly fight new protections against third-party development tools.
