Omnimaga
Calculator Community => Other Calc-Related Projects and Ideas => TI Z80 => Topic started by: BlakPilar on July 16, 2011, 06:41:17 pm
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Hello everyone! Even if you're not reading this, hello!
I'm BlakPilar, in case you didn't know that. However, this little forum post is for you! Yes, you! Not that chick down the hall, or that dude on the other side of the room- you. I'm working on a project called TBEXE (+1 if you can guess what it is without reading on.) It will allow anyone who decides to try it out to take their boring, old, bland .8xp programs and turn them into full-fledged executable programs for use on any Windows machine! With full access to color and processor speed! Yay!
Right now TBEXE is still very much in its infancy, which is the perfect time for me to be doing this kind of poll. I want you to ask yourself and anyone else who you think might download and/or use TBEXE when it is released what you would want in it. I want your ideas because I want to make this a lasting program that many people will use. Heck, if enough people want it, I'll draw a purple dinosaur and throw that in there. TBEXE is a program made by me, for you.
I have some obvious, common features planned, such as syntax highlighting, auto-complete/intellisense, code snippets, a WinForms designer (like the one in Visual Studio), plugin support, and possibly theme support. I have little to no creativity in my mind and I can't really think of any other features besides those aforementioned. Oh, of course you can also import and export as a .8xp, but some command syntax will be changed, not all commands will be supported when exporting to .exe, and some commands/functionality will be added.
So um... Yeah. Gimme suggestions ;D
--EDIT--
If you still don't understand what this is, here's a simple explanation:
I take your calculator-only .8xp programs and turn them into fully-functional .exe programs so you can use your calculator programs on the computer WITHOUT the need of an emulator. With the resulting executable file, you will be able to do everything with a normal computer program that the calculator can do with a calculator program. See EDIT3 if you're still confused.
--EDIT2--
TBEXE will be completely open-source! :D I'll be hosting it on Codeplex (and maybe here if I get the privilege >.>) as soon as it's ready for Alpha testing.
--EDIT3--
TBEXE will only support BASIC .8XPs. If you try to open an ASM compiled program, you'll get the same result as if you tried editing the same program on-calc after unlocking it using MirageOS or something similar. Because of the plugin support, if someone wants to write a plugin to handle decompiling of those ASM programs, go right ahead.
I probably left some stuff out (I wrote EDIT3 quickly from my Zune HD), so if I did, just ask me and I'll get to you. Also, don't forget to give me suggestions! Thanks! ;D
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Can i get a second on templates? Possibly with permision from others you could include a built in emulator, like wabbit, and tell ppl to get roms from calc, or automate the rom process. FTP file support for uploading projects to server? thas just some.
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I'll go for the purple dinosaur. :P
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@Ti-Programmer, could you explain more on what you mean by templates? It'll only support .8xp program files on the first release, if that helps. It seems like a good idea, though. As for the emulator, I might consider that for the first release, but I was thinking that might be able to be accomplished using a plugin (I'll contact the people who control Wabbit when the time comes). FTP shouldn't be too hard using sockets. I like that idea, people could easily work on the project with others. Thanks! :D
@pianoman, get about 199 others to go for it and you got yourself a deal :P
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I don't quite understand. Is this a basic interpreter or a Z80 emulator?
Either way, I'd go for that dinosaur! :P
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@ralphdspam, it's kind of a basic interpreter, but it's really neither. It'll be able to open/save as 8xp files, but I am building a sort of conversion engine that will allow users to turn .8xp programs into fully-functional .exe programs to run on the computer.
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@ralphdspam, it's kind of a basic interpreter, but it's really neither. It'll be able to open/save as 8xp files, but I am building a sort of conversion engine that will allow users to turn .8xp programs into fully-functional .exe programs to run on the computer.
I'm sorry. I still don't quite understand. Will your program only parse through TI-BASIC commands or will it support no-stub ASM as well?
It is a little confusing because an .8xp file could contain either one. ???
Also, do you plan on adding support for 3rd party commands from xLib, CelticIII, Omnicalc, etc.?
Either way, you have a great idea, and I would like to see it take root. :)
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Okay, my bad, sorry lol. It'll open ASM-compiled .8XPs, but it'll just do what the calculator does when you try to open an ASM program after unlocking it with MirageOS or something.
I could add support for xLib, etc. It wouldn't really be that hard to implement. I was thinking of designating that for a plugin as well, but you never know...
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I just thought of another feature! How does a BASIC Sprite Helper sound? You can highlight text from your code, open the helper, and it will show you what it will look like on-calc!
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How mature is the project so far? What sort of details can you provide (implementation language, general design)?
This project is relevant to my interests... if you like Python at all, I'm in the middle of writing a very flexible TI-BASIC interpreter (https://github.com/lunixbochs/pitybas/) (it's almost to the point of running normal programs, can parse and execute simple ones already)
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Well, check out my signature for the progress lol. The language I'm using to write it is C#.NET. Possibly when I get my tokenizer done and implement opening/saving I'll upload the source to the Codeplex page I'm working on. I'm sure you'll also read my comment on TIConvert, but Python and I have a love/hate relationship. I love it because of its flexibility and looseness, but because of that I can't use it (I'm OCD like that). I think in my OP I discussed some design features, etc. and once I upload some source, Codeplex will let me publish the project so others can see it there.
I could always use someone else on the development team, even if they only cover one or two aspects. So if you're interested... :) (Python to C# shouldn't be too hard, but don't quote me on that lol)
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well, once I get the interpreter fleshed out a bit more (it still needs a finished implementation of comma-separated values like used in Disp+functions, and working jump/skip for blocks (If, While, Repeat) + Goto/LBL), my next goal is a Javascript port w/ html canvas for display
afaik you can invoke both python and javascript from C#/CLR, maybe you could save a lot of work that way :) my token handling is extremely flexible, and I could easily delegate parts or all of it to C#
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Hmm... What do you mean a "finished implementation of comma-separated values"? Is that in tokenizing, or detokenizing? And what do you mean by "jump/skip blocks"?
I may have to look into invoking Python in C# then... That would be much easier for everyone involved lol.
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I think he's trying to build an interpreter that will actually run a TI-Basic program from the computer.
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I don't need to detokenize, because I'm only interested in running the code - not displaying it :)
I define tokens as classes in python, with methods like get(), set(), run()
tokens have an "order of operations" property, which allows me to push the proper token types into expressions, and evaluate expressions in the right order
right now, the following test cases work:
Disp "string constant:"
Disp "spam"
Disp "string concatenation:"
Disp "eggs" + " foo"
Disp "expression with parens"
Disp ((1 + 2) + 3) * 4
Disp "unterminated brackets"
Disp ((1 + 2
Disp "logic operators"
Disp 1 < 3 and 4 > 3
Disp "variable set, implied multiplication"
2->A
1->B
Disp AB
Disp "-> should close all brackets (this should Disp 6)"
3+(1+2->C
Disp C
Disp "->D->E"
1->D->E
Disp D + E
the only code constructs I can't handle yet, are If/Then/Else/End, While, Repeat statements (blocks), which actually just need an interpreter method to skip around (when I hit an "If" token, it'll evaluate the expression i.e. "If 1" will check to see if 1 is true, then either continue execution or jump to the next (Else or End))
when I hit an End during normal execution, it'll look at the stack of blocks I'm in and ask the last block on the stack whether to repeat the block or not. this even allows me to simulate the "If 1 End" feature to skip back to the last While loop
for Goto, I just need to be able to say "Skip to the next Label token with the label x"
the interpreter can already handle all of this except the skipping around part :)
for comma-separated values, that's function arguments and Disp as per this test case:
Disp 1, 2, 3
Output(1, 2, 3)
once I get these working, I just need to implement the behavior of a lot of tokens/functions - but the way it's designed, that's completely separate from the VM.
I just define a class with a run() function, and its behavior is completely isolated there
for the pure-python version, I'm thinking I'll just implement something along the lines of really limited homescreen emulation for now, and aim for being able to at least run menu-based games like drugwars :) I might implement vt100 control codes for better homescreen emulation so we can play mofrog and such
for the javascript version, I was planning to do full homescreen and graph screen emulation, including the fonts used. that's a bit down the road.
I'm pretty happy with my progress so far, and excited to have a turing-complete language pretty soon.
in the next few days, I'm hoping to be able to run most BASIC programs driven by menus and text input, which don't rely on the graph screen or homescreen positioning from Output()
I think he's trying to build an interpreter that will actually run a TI-Basic program from the computer.
it can already run simple programs
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OH. Okay, now completely understand what you're doing. Gotcha. Wow, yeah, that's very similar to what I'm doing lol. I'm (de)tokenizing because TBEXE is also going to be a BASIC-IDE. Instead of directly interpreting the BASIC code like you are, I'm just going to see which commands will be needed, add them if they are, and convert the entire thing into C# or VB and use System.CodeDom, etc. to build that file into a .NET-based executable.
Your idea is very nifty too ;)
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Perhaps for comma based Disp's you could just write a new line?
I don't know Python, but in C# you could interpret
Disp "Hello","World"
as
Disp "Hello" + "\n" + "World"
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Perhaps for comma based Disp's you could just write a new line?
I don't know Python, but in C# you could interpret
Disp "Hello","World"
as
Disp "Hello" + "\n" + "World"
right, but what happens when I do this? :)
Disp "Hello", 1I got it anywho, the test passes now.
you understand it'll be very hard to implement some of the quirks of TI-BASIC without an interpreter or specialized virtual machine, right?
my goal:
given an existing TI-BASIC program that runs on a calculator, execute it as identically as possible except for speed.
with this, I should be able to take any program from ticalc.org and run it verbatim
it sounds close enough to what you're doing, I still think we could work together (unless you have some really good ideas for translating BASIC's quirks to CLR)
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you understand it'll be very hard to implement some of the quirks of TI-BASIC without an interpreter or specialized virtual machine, right?
But of course! That is where my .exe "engine" and my misc. come in to play. Also, like I said in my OP, not all commands will be supported (mainly the statistics ones, such as T-Tests), at least on the first major release; some may have different syntax, and some might do different things. Don't worry about me on that part ;)
P.S. - If you look at the TBEXE "spoiler" in my signature, you'll see there are 4 parts that make up TBEXE. The .exe engine will take the longest, which is mainly why I haven't started it yet lol.
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Perhaps for comma based Disp's you could just write a new line?
I don't know Python, but in C# you could interpret
Disp "Hello","World"
as
Disp "Hello" + "\n" + "World"
right, but what happens when I do this? :)
Disp "Hello", 1
...
it sounds close enough to what you're doing, I still think we could work together (unless you have some really good ideas for translating BASIC's quirks to CLR)
...1.ToString() xD Anyway, don't mind me, I need to hit the hay soon lol.
It's quite close to what I'm doing, and I would love for us to work together. The only "really good" idea imo is the accessibility to WinForms.
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That is where my .exe "engine" and my misc. come in to play.
my entire project right now is simulating the basic interpreter, which sounds like what you'd be doing in your EXE engine. You could embed Python at this point instead of writing your own VM.
I just got functions working. The next step is a Block stack, then skip/goto ability and I'll have most of the interpreter done, sans the actual token behaviors (which are all separate and self-contained)
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That is where my .exe "engine" and my misc. come in to play.
my entire project right now is simulating the basic interpreter, which sounds like what you'd be doing in your EXE engine. You could embed Python at this point instead of writing your own VM.
Yeah, you're right. Let me sleep on it and I'll think about how I can integrate it. Sounds fun! :D
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Nice project, BlakPilar. Have you considered using a bytecode parser as the base of your compiler? TI-BASIC is very close to bytecode with the pre-tokenized functions, so it'd probably save a lot of work.
Request: Full math support. I know it's kind of obvious, but sometimes it annoys me to waste time writing simple functions (that take a long time to execute on-calc) in PC math languages that could be done very quickly in TI-BASIC.
Also, the ability to call external programs would be nice.
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Thanks Qwerty! I have actually considered bytecode for this project, which would make the resulting programs cross-platform if I remember bytecode correctly? However, I don't know how I could access forms through bytecode compilation.
For math support, I fully intend to implement order of operations and as many of the math functions as quickly and simply as possible for speed. The only things I'm a bit iffy on are some of the "complex" statistics functions, such as T-Tests.
Calling external programs wouldn't be hard at all. I was also thinking about having the ability to port sub-programs for the on-calc versions into classes for the on-comp version and vice versa for more customizability, such as overloading.
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Well lunixbochs, I was thinking about it and my .exe engine is really a conversion-to-c# engine and I just use .NET's built-in assembling techniques to compile that converted code. I um... I kinda lied when I said I knew exactly what you interpreter did. You interpret what's going on in the program and execute it in Python? If that's it then yes, that's almost exactly my .exe engine. If we worked together, which would be awesome, we would have to modify that to execute the commands in C#, or learn more on executing Python inside of C#. The conversion, if we do that, or just using your interpreter shouldn't be that hard because I just added a direct-byte manipulation feature and I have a function that will convert a byte-string into a byte (i.e. "2A" will be turned into 0x2A).
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I wish I had computer programming skills x.x I have experience in making interpreted languages, though...
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I remember way back when this was just starting out :D
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Eh, computer programming isn't hard. Pretty much just logic when coding and figuring out how to do certain things. If you can program in Axe, you can easily make a transition to computers. With the interpreted languages maybe you could help out too... >.>
I remember when Batlib and BASIC ReCode started out :)
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@Ti-Programmer, could you explain more on what you mean by templates? It'll only support .8xp program files on the first release, if that helps. It seems like a good idea, though. As for the emulator, I might consider that for the first release, but I was thinking that might be able to be accomplished using a plugin (I'll contact the people who control Wabbit when the time comes). FTP shouldn't be too hard using sockets. I like that idea, people could easily work on the project with others. Thanks! :D
@pianoman, get about 199 others to go for it and you got yourself a deal :P
I thought this was an IDE at first...
Sorry...
But you could ask SirCmpwn to integrate this in his IDE, he might do it.
Its really useful for those who don't have roms.
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@Ti-Programmer, could you explain more on what you mean by templates? It'll only support .8xp program files on the first release, if that helps. It seems like a good idea, though. As for the emulator, I might consider that for the first release, but I was thinking that might be able to be accomplished using a plugin (I'll contact the people who control Wabbit when the time comes). FTP shouldn't be too hard using sockets. I like that idea, people could easily work on the project with others. Thanks! :D
@pianoman, get about 199 others to go for it and you got yourself a deal :P
I thought this was an IDE at first...
Sorry...
But you could ask SirCmpwn to integrate this in his IDE, he might do it.
Its really useful for those who don't have roms.
Um... What? This is an IDE... IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment. Visual Studio is an IDE, SharpDevelop is an IDE; the concept is not TI-based lol. I don't want to ask SirCmpwn to integrate this; I want this to be a standalone IDE :P
Besides, with lunixbochs's Python interpreter (we might have to port it to C#) there really won't be a need for an emulator. I understand how I could implement templates, though, so thanks for that! (I was confused at first because there really wasn't any need that I could think of)
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Besides, with lunixbochs's Python interpreter (we might have to port it to C#) there really won't be a need for an emulator.
No need for a C# port, we can integrate Python code cleanly with C# via IronPython: http://ironpython.net/
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Request: Full math support. I know it's kind of obvious, but sometimes it annoys me to waste time writing simple functions (that take a long time to execute on-calc) in PC math languages that could be done very quickly in TI-BASIC.
like this? (watch in 480p for best effect)
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@Ti-Programmer, could you explain more on what you mean by templates? It'll only support .8xp program files on the first release, if that helps. It seems like a good idea, though. As for the emulator, I might consider that for the first release, but I was thinking that might be able to be accomplished using a plugin (I'll contact the people who control Wabbit when the time comes). FTP shouldn't be too hard using sockets. I like that idea, people could easily work on the project with others. Thanks! :D
@pianoman, get about 199 others to go for it and you got yourself a deal :P
I thought this was an IDE at first...
Sorry...
But you could ask SirCmpwn to integrate this in his IDE, he might do it.
Its really useful for those who don't have roms.
Um... What? This is an IDE... IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment. Visual Studio is an IDE, SharpDevelop is an IDE; the concept is not TI-based lol. I don't want to ask SirCmpwn to integrate this; I want this to be a standalone IDE :P
Besides, with lunixbochs's Python interpreter (we might have to port it to C#) there really won't be a need for an emulator. I understand how I could implement templates, though, so thanks for that! (I was confused at first because there really wasn't any need that I could think of)
Ok. I think i understand now. I would love to have a copy when it's released. It sounds pretty cool, from what i've read.
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Besides, with lunixbochs's Python interpreter (we might have to port it to C#) there really won't be a need for an emulator.
No need for a C# port, we can integrate Python code cleanly with C# via IronPython: http://ironpython.net/
Yay! :D
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Ok, so, the layout and design are subject to major changes, but here's what it looks like atm...
(http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/8134/screeniek.jpg)
The byte editor is uneditable by just typing in it; you need to double click it and a proper byte-editor dialog will show up.
P.S. - The program is ztrumpet's Drifter (http://tibasicdev.wikidot.com/archives:drifter). Also, I took the screenshot just as the caret disappeared so you can't see it, but I assure you Row and Col work :P
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dopewars running on pitybas
I only replaced the Output()s with my own display function (I don't emulate the homescreen for Output() to work yet), otherwise it's verbatim the detokenized 8xp I downloaded from a random site
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dopewars running on pitybas
I only replaced the Output()s with my own display function (I don't emulate the homescreen for Output() to work yet), otherwise it's verbatim the detokenized 8xp I downloaded from a random site
Nice! I've only been working on the tokenizer a bit (not much, though). I'm looking into compiling to byte-code because I'm sure that'd be alot easier for both of us, and also into using SharpDevelop's TextEditor control so we can easily implement code folding, syntax highlighting, and auto-complete.
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I'm looking into compiling to byte-code because I'm sure that'd be alot easier for both of us
not easier. if you have untokenized text, I can execute that directly :P
the only thing we need in C# is the actual IDE, the detokenizer (though I'll probably implement one soon), and the graphical interface emulating the calculator screen. that would be easier for both of us, because my part can already take plain text source and execute it perfectly.
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I do have untokenized text- look at the screenshot lol. And yeah, I'm starting to realize it'd be easier to just use the built-in assembly classes. No need to make a detokenizer, at least for the TBEXE-integrated version. I'll see what I can do about a graphical emulator, but I have to actually start working on summer work for school :x
Btw, can your implementer feedback its methods in C#? Because now that I think about it, that would be more useful for the exe engine than actually executing the code- that'd be more for the emulator.
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Request: Full math support. I know it's kind of obvious, but sometimes it annoys me to waste time writing simple functions (that take a long time to execute on-calc) in PC math languages that could be done very quickly in TI-BASIC.
like this? (watch in 480p for best effect)
Pretty much.
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Hey, cool, Drifter. I feel honored that you chose it to test with. :)
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Request: Full math support. I know it's kind of obvious, but sometimes it annoys me to waste time writing simple functions (that take a long time to execute on-calc) in PC math languages that could be done very quickly in TI-BASIC.
like this? (watch in 480p for best effect)
Pretty much.
it's in a working state right now, if you wanted to try it out :) it'll just need some math tokens/functions implemented depending on what you're doing. if you run into a token I haven't implemented yet, it's pretty easy for me to do so
https://github.com/lunixbochs/pitybas
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Hey, cool, Drifter. I feel honored that you chose it to test with. :)
No problemo! I really liked it and it was the longest program I could think of, so I figured "Why not?" lol
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Oh the pics look like it is a great IDE. Too bad it will require Mono under Linux and Mac OS, but it still looks good. Will there be Axe support?
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Will there be Axe support?
I'm planning to work on Axe support in pitybas, so he'll be able to execute it if he wants
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Will there be Axe support?
I'm planning to work on Axe support in pitybas, so he'll be able to execute it if he wants
Yeah, there's that, but what do people mean, exactly, when they ask if there will be support for Axe? I mean, it uses the same tokens, etc, just a different syntax.
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Also what .NET Framework does this use? Because of Mono compatibility...
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It uses 4.0, but I'm sure a lot of it can be reconfigured for 3.0 or 3.5.
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It uses 4.0, but I'm sure a lot of it can be reconfigured for 3.0 or 3.5.
4.0 requires Mono 2.8 or above, 3.5 allows Mono 2.6.7.
If you could, making it 3.5 is much better, because Ubuntu's Default is 2.6.7, and it's what most people use.
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Does Mono support WPF?