Omnimaga
Omnimaga => News => Topic started by: DJ Omnimaga on May 25, 2011, 08:00:14 pm
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No, this is neither a fake news nor a late April fools joke and the text of this news is not brown-colored: they really did it! Texas Instruments has allowed the release of their tools to generate Lua TNS files on Inspired-Lua there!
http://www.inspired-lua.org/preliminary-scripting-tool/
Note that it is not allowed to redistribute this tool, however, and you must click the agree box on the page above to access the file. Only Inspired-Lua is currently allowed to provide the file itself, so you must link to that page when distributing it.
Like the community tools, you create your Lua script with notepad or any other text editor. You use the official tool to copy the data in your clipboard, then in a TI-Nspire software 3.0 or higher, you paste that data inside a tab of your choice.
However, the difference is that unlike the community tools, you can paste the data inside an already existing document instead of only an empty one, which can be an advantage in some cases and could even open doors for future improvements. Could there eventually be, for example, an on-calc Lua editor?
However, remember that if you upgrade to OS 3.0.1, you must first use TNOC (http://ti.bank.free.fr/index.php?mod=archives&ac=voir&id=1922) to remove the anti-downgrade protection and the dangerous calc destruction bug! Also, once you installed OS 3.0.2, you can't downgrade anymore. Be very careful if you plan to use Ndless again in the future, since Ndless is still only available for OS 1.7, 2.0.1 and 2.1.0!
This means that TI has finally decided to take a change in direction regarding third-party development. We hope that in the future, they will allow ASM and C as well, since Lua will certainly now allow things such as nDoom on the TI-Nspire, due to being interpreted, or that they will not continue to block future attempts to make Ndless compatible with more recent OSes. We also do not know if they did that to repair their Sony-like reputation among the TI community and now Slashdot, to eventually sell a SDK or the final version of the tool above or for the TI community, but nonetheless, this is still a step in the right direction. After 4 years, could they finally have listened to the TI community?
This marks the first time a TI or Casio proprietary tool makes it to our notable calculator program releases section.
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I'd still say wait for a while to see what this will end up being. I still see only approved apps in the future
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How exactly do you use this tool?
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I think there will be a guide out soon.
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Wonderful :)
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I wonder how well Lua performs. I wish they'd allow C/assembly, because it would perform much faster and be more powerful.
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I'm not sure. It might just be asimple operation thing that needs no guide. I'd suggest you download and look at it. The ReadME will probably explain everything for you.
I want asm because doesn't that mean there are no software limits on whats possible only hardware.
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It would be nice if we could use C/asm. But at least we can draw things at a decent speed and use the coveted getkey functionality. I just hope they don't start making it so programs must be approved.
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Can't believe I'm saying this: TI++
Guess it's gonna be free for everyone after all :D
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since Lua will certainly now allow things such as nDoom on the TI-Nspire, due to being interpreted
You mean not allow right? But this is terrific news! Finally a decent programming language is officially supported by TI on the nSpire :D
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I still think they are going to add something to control what can be put on calcs but that could just be me being paranoid and unwilling to trust
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I wonder how well Lua performs. I wish they'd allow C/assembly, because it would perform much faster and be more powerful.
Apparently it's very fast, but much slower than ASM/C. Revolutionary games might be possible, but no port of nDoom or a SNES emulator.
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Wow, this is a surprise to be sure. This is a step in the right direction from TI, but it's still not enough for me.
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It sounds promising, but I would not jump the gun too quickly.
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I'm very happy about all this!
TI *is* getting better.
Thanks TI!
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TI, you rock! :P
Well, that depends ofcourse if you aren't tricking us.
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answer to somebody : Btw, it's not as fast as C/asm of course, but it's really fast for an interpreted langage.
And did you guys check out the articles on the blog ? (tutorials...)
Tell us what you think about them and what you'd like to have explained in other tutorials ! :)
Also, don't forget http://wiki.inspired-lua.org (http://wiki.inspired-lua.org) ;)
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YES, about ti has started to care for us :D
I think they are letting this slide because it is just used to make games, not anything like what oslauncher does (but hey, if they had let asm in the first place, we would not have needed oslauncher to be made :D)
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I still need to know: is it 3.0.2 compatible?
EDIT: The application is Wine-ready!
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This seems like a step in the right direction, and should be welcomed as such... but it is far from being enough.
On the one hand, Lua is a good choice for a fast interpreted language (even if they don't JIT it with http://luajit.org/ ), and it will make happier those who have been lamenting for years about some areas of the Nspire's BASIC being inferior to the 20-year-old TI-81/80.
On the other hand... no official documentation on C/C++/ASM means that our abilities to integrate with the Phoenix (OS) functionality remain very low, a far cry from what we've been able to achieve for years on the TI-68k/AMS platform.
What's even more damning, is that deep down, I've shown the CAS interface to be very close to that of AMS. IOW, for a large chunk of it at least, they keep selling mostly the same old code base that they've been selling for more than ten years.
Teachers and TI don't want us to make games on the Nspire platform... but since they're not giving us the information necessary for making lower-level math programs, and it's tedious to find it by ourselves (the Nspire document system is a complicated beast), making native code games on the Nspire platform remains much easier than making native math programs. The former only requires writing to the screen, reading from the keyboard, and optionally reading from / writing to files; the latter requires reading variable data from / writing variable data to documents in undocumented format through unspecified means.
I think that current Ndless programs cannot hold data for variables in such a way that the CAS can find them. Fully defeating the encryption would help determining whether my feeling is correct.
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I still need to know: is it 3.0.2 compatible?
EDIT: The application is Wine-ready!
But is the TI-Nspire software (required by this Lua converter) also WINE-ready?
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This is pretty awesome. I hope TI allows Asm next. :)
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Lua is TI's solution to the lack of sandboxing feature of the previous OS versions that former TI employee Zac Bowling pointed out. This prevented any opening to third-party development that would have fiddle with protected features (such as Norse or OSLauncher do).
The Lua execution environment of the TI-Nspire is well-integrated with the OS (clipboard, menu, variables, ...) and controlled (but too much for a nDoom in Lua), and very similar to TI-68k's Flash Apps (and may be z80 Apps I don't know much about).
Don't expect any further move from TI towards native coding, they've added what they thought was missing. Don't blame them, it's a calculator after all.
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no way...
I still smell something fishy, but for now, TI's being pretty good.
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hey, check this out, TI is advertising the SDK! http://bit.ly/7BQ1 (http://bit.ly/7BQ1)
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hey, check this out, TI is advertising the SDK! http://bit.ly/7BQ1 (http://bit.ly/7BQ1)
Aaagh...
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I still need to know: is it 3.0.2 compatible?
EDIT: The application is Wine-ready!
But is the TI-Nspire software (required by this Lua converter) also WINE-ready?
hey, check this out, TI is advertising the SDK! http://bit.ly/7BQ1 (http://bit.ly/7BQ1)
Double-FUUUUUUU.
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hey, check this out, TI is advertising the SDK! http://bit.ly/7BQ1 (http://bit.ly/7BQ1)
dang you renatose
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Really, renatose?
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If only.
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we can hope(for the keys)
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There's no way they'd give us the OS keys, because if there's one thing they will never let us change it's the OS itself. ASM/C programming? It's possible, though unlikely. OS keys? Never.
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Lets hack their servers and they probably have them placed on site somewhere so we call int he ninjas(Nethams) and steal those keys. yes I am very much obsessed over this.
Maybe the c/Asm would let us hack those keys
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Maybe the c/Asm would let us hack those keys
No. Asm/C doesn't give us anything but the public keys, and we already have those. What we need are the private keys, which we can only obtain by running a ridiculously long calculation that might last for years.
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Lets hack their servers and they probably have them placed on site somewhere so we call int he ninjas(Nethams) and steal those keys. yes I am very much obsessed over this.
Maybe the c/Asm would let us hack those keys
I know you're only kidding around, but you shouldn't joke about hacking into servers.
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OK Art_of_Camelot.