Omnimaga
Calculator Community => Other Calc-Related Projects and Ideas => TI Z80 => Topic started by: Runer112 on February 20, 2011, 06:44:30 am
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TL;DR: 2 modified .xml files for TI's Program Editor to convert it from a TI-BASIC into an Axe program editor.
I like programming for calculators on the computer for a few reasons. You have a much larger space to work with, things like copy, paste, undo, redo, etc. Also, your programs are always safe on your computer if your calculator crashes.
A lot of my calculator programming is done in Axe. Because the Axe language is based on TI-BASIC tokens and programs, I write and edit my programs with the TI-BASIC program editor called "TI Program Editor" bundled with TI-CONNECT. Unfortunately, TI decided to remove the only useful program to me from the TI-CONNECT suite, so you can't download it from TI anymore. You may or may not be able to find a download link in the description of a video from a YouTube search, though...
Anyway, I write Axe programs with this software that was intended for editing TI-BASIC programs. Because of this, it obviously lacks things like Axe token replacements and such. Even worse, it doesn't properly support some tokens like lowercase letters, making some programs impossible to open and others annoying to edit. And although it has a nice catalog of commands and calculator tokens to select from, it can be tedious to navigate it and find the Axe commands you want. Anyways, it looks like this:
(http://img.removedfromgame.com/imgs/TIProgramEditor_Normal.png)
It definitely has some nice features for TI-BASIC program editing:
- Tabbed file management
- Easily edit program details like the name it will be on a calculator or lock status
- The usual text editing features like cut, copy, paste
- A font specifically designed to mimic the font on the TI calculators and display special characters very nicely
- A categorized catalog of special symbols and all the functions you would find on your normal calculator, often sorted by an identical menu system
- Token hotkeys, useful for quickly entering common tokens you can't type on a keyboard
For an Axe programmer, a lot of those features are just as nice as for a TI-BASIC programmer. But the fact that it wasn't designed for Axe programming, chokes on some lowercase letters, and has a few other quirks sometimes made it difficult for me to write Axe programs on it. I could have decided to write my own Axe IDE, but I'm lazy. So I decided to just modify TI's already existing and pretty well-developed program editor. The same program you saw above with two modified source files suddenly becomes so much more Axe friendly:
(http://img.removedfromgame.com/imgs/TIProgramEditor_hAxed.png)
Every token that displays differently in Axe has been changed to its Axe equivalent, so no more needing to look up which rotate command Shade_t() was! Commands actually make sense! And you can now simply type something like Copy( and not wonder why you get a compile error at the "o". Additionally, although the old catalog of tokens and TI-BASIC commands remains in a section called "Normal" in the command chooser, a whole new section exists just for Axe! In this section are tokens for every symbol, variable, and constant used in Axe, followed by tokens for every Axe command. And if you're familiar with the Commands.htm file included in Axe releases, it should be a piece of cake to navigate the commands because they're sorted in the same exact order. I just finished this myself so haven't been able to fully try programming with it, but I'm sure it will be a lot nicer programming in Axe with it now than without it.
If you have TI's Program Editor and want to test this out, I have attached a zip file containing the two modified xml files that constitute this modification. To hAxe the program, simply find the directory it exists in and replace "83PlusDictionary.xml" and "TI-83 PlusFunctionTree.tree" with the modified versions in the zip file. It may be a good idea to back up the originals first, though.
And once you've tested it out, tell me how it is!
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Good idea Runer, I don't have it, but Tokens already has this feature and it's fine for me :)
How do you make so perfect screenshots (borders)?
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Neat idea and execution :)
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Hey, that's a good idea! And I still wonder why TI took it out of TI-Connect :P
Good idea Runer, I don't have it, but Tokens already has this feature and it's fine for me :)
How do you make so perfect screenshots (borders)?
Alt+PrtSc takes a screenshot of the open window.
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Alt+PrtSc takes a screenshot of the open window.
Oh my god, it's awesome!
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And for tougher jobs, there's Screen Capture in Programs > Accessories.
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Are you planning on porting this to Mac at all?
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I didn't touch the executable code, I have no idea how any of it works. I just spent a while modifying 2 .xml files that govern tokens and the catalog.
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Well, perhaps if you had access to the Mac version of the same files, do you think you could edit them? Or would it not be so easy?
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I may be wrong, but aren't .xml files platform independent? In that case you could just use these same 2 files with a Mac version and it would work just like with the Windows version.
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Couldnt figure out where to put it. Seemed to have no effect at all.
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Hmm... The version I have isn't actually part of TI-Connect, so it might be a bit different. But I would suggest looking for a folder (probably where TI-Connect is installed) that contains files like these, most importantly 83PlusDictionary.xml and TI-83 PlusFunctionTree.tree because those are the 2 files that need to be replaced. If you can't find them manually, maybe try searching your computer for 83PlusDictionary.
(http://img.removedfromgame.com/imgs/TIProgramEditor_Folder.png)
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This is really cool. Great job, Runer! ;D
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Awesome! This is definitively gonna go into news. You should probably put the files in the downloads section, because some visitors mostly go there and this could easily get lost.
Now there is TokenIDE, but some people probably were used to the old TI-Program editor so they might like this a lot. It sucks that TI removed it. I also liked TI Group Editor.
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Very nice! :)
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Can someone post a link to TI Program Editor itself.
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Can someone post a link to TI Program Editor itself.
I don't think we should (just in case someone sees it and asks for it to be removed). Use email for less-than-completely-legal software exchanges..
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You can download it off TI-BASIC Developer.
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I think it's on TI-BANK too, but we'll just keep this info at that. Hopefully you can manage to find it there. I don't really want these sites to be in trouble either. I think I remember hearing about a website that hosted it before and TI asked them to take it down. But again, the site also included TI-Connect 1.5 itself.