On Jan 9, 2012, at 11:43 AM, Doug McNutt wrote:
At 08:23 -0800 1/9/12, Joshua Juran wrote:
An eccentric few[1] might enjoy using MacRelix on Mac OS 9 or
earlier. It's developed by me and distributed under the GNU GPL
version 3 or later.
http://www.metamage.com/code/MacRelix/
[1] You're enough of a hacker that you're already using an actual
Unix system, but you're also still using Mac OS 9 for some reason.
I guess I qualify having started with UNIX on a machine with 1/2
inch tapes and 16 bit words. The Ubuntu box is on a desk to my left.
This comes to you from an 8500 running 9.1. It has no problems with
Eudora 5.1 which beats any UNIX mail program I have ever seen. The
application uses a resource fork for its preferences and message
directories. It will never be ported to Lion.
The reason Eudora will never be ported to Lion, or any other
operating system for that matter, is that Qualcomm no longer supports
it and the source code isn't open.
I also really like those resource forks, an Apple invention that
Apple itself is killing off.
Along with HyperCard, great desktop keyboards (and sensible Caps Lock
modes), code fragments, the entire Carbon API, and the personal
computer.
The UNIX version comes from NexT Inc. I see it as the source of the
X in OS neXt while claiming it means ten.
I liked NeXTstep and the NeXT computers. The OS was quite snappy as
long as it had 16 MB of RAM to work with. And the keyboard made Caps
Lock mode accidents impossible by omitting the Caps Lock key and
requiring a chord instead -- absolutely brilliant and fully
effective, and now completely ignored.
The left screen shows an MPW window which is essentially a combined
text editor and a c-shell for OS 9.
Having worked with MPW, I didn't find the worksheet model an
improvement over a standard Unix shell.
Now free from Apple.
Only for certain limited values of "now". Apple removed the files
from their FTP server in 2010. Now they've memory-holed the Web
page, too.
MPW is now just as non-free and unavailable as CodeWarrior. :-(
I can edit lines of text which are really shell commands for OS 9.
Starting up Eudora is a matter of selecting this line:
open -f "Callisto:Applications:Communication:Eudora 5.1:Eudora"
MacRelix includes a partial clone of OS X's 'open'. It takes Unix
pathnames, unless you give it the --mac option. It also includes a
File shell script that calls open --mac, and a Line that uses the
more general aevt.
Poke the ENTER key and everything happens.
Yup, I copied that behavior, mainly for use with compiler diagnostics.
Forget about Finder. I can also use compilers and assemblers when I
feel like it. More complicated scripts are simple text files that I
can execute just by selecting the file name and poking ENTER.
My biggest beef with MPW is that only one tool can be executing at a
time. Not "actively running and consuming CPU cycles" but "executing
at all" -- tools can't call other tools, not even with system(). So
Make can't actually do anything but print out what it would have done
if it were running in Unix. Perl? Nope, that's another tool. Only
MPW Shell scripts are special and have the privilege of running other
scripts and tools. And the scripting language doesn't even have
functions, so you need to create a script file for each function you
need, and use Execute as a poor man's function call. On my Quadra
605, it took over 30 seconds for my custom build tool (a combination
of Perl, dmake fragments, and numerous MPW shell scripts) to
determine it had nothing to do.
I used MPW long enough to write the first version of MacRelix (then
called Genie) and a new build tool in C++. Now I only use ToolServer
to run Rez and the Metrowerks tools. A program called tlsrvr sends
its arguments to ToolServer in an Apple event and relays the output
and exit status; mwcc accepts gcc-style options and Unix pathnames
and uses tlsrvr to call MWC{68K,PPC} with appropriate arguments.
I shall have a look at MacRelix.
I eagerly await your feedback!
Josh
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