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Flash apps for TI-89 series

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flarn2006:
Just wondering, why is it that on ticalc.org there's so few Flash apps for the TI-89 (Titanium)/TI-92 Plus/Voyage 200? Are they like super hard to write or something? They seem much more user-friendly than ASM.

TIfanx1999:
Flash apps are written in ASM. They never really caught on for the 68k series of calculators. The main reasons being their was plenty of Ram on these models, and there was no size limit on executable code. On the 83+series, there is a limit of 8k on executable code. It has since been circumvented by shells that run programs, and other independent programs. You are still kind of limited by the ram though. Apps have no such limits, thus they had some degree of popularity, and third party programs for writing apps were developed. Not sure if there were any developed for the 68k series. Also, the 68k series has always been more popular in Europe, and in recent years isn't even as popular there (most likely due to the nspire series being released). So yea, that's several reasons why.

flarn2006:

--- Quote from: flarn2006 on July 29, 2017, 04:32:26 pm ---Just wondering, why is it that on ticalc.org there's so few Flash apps for the TI-89 (Titanium)/TI-92 Plus/Voyage 200? Are they like super hard to write or something? They seem much more user-friendly than ASM.

--- End quote ---

I know they're ASM programs technically; I meant the kind that are installed and run like BASIC programs are.

And Flash apps have many benefits that those don't. Like how you can switch between apps, run them in split screen, etc. I can't really think of anything ASM programs can do that Flash apps can't (not even being run as functions; Flash apps can do that too.) So why aren't Flash apps the more popular one? Aren't they better anyway, even without RAM limits on non-Flash apps?

Sorunome:
I think a large factor is that the community for the 68k calculators is pretty much non-existant and thus people don't write things for it...it's sad, i really like my 89

TravisE:
Lionel Debroux would be best to explain this since my memory is fuzzy. I think part of it may be that historically, TI was pretty stingy about signing third-party flash apps so people could release them (it was only until more recently that the community cracked all the signing keys themselves, and by this time 68k development was much less active), and TI's official dev tools were rather awful.

Another guess is that I would assume that making apps that fully interface with the OS might involve a lot more work and overhead and may require calling OS routines that are much slower than simply rendering to the screen oneself. I could be wrong on this, though.

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