• CiderPress II Update

    From fadden@21:1/5 to All on Wed Jul 12 13:22:04 2023
    I've published CiderPress II v0.2, which introduces a usable implementation of the Windows GUI interface. Now working: add, extract, view, delete, create directory, edit attributes, edit blocks/sectors. File viewer export and defaults-setting features
    now work.

    There are still lots of core features missing, including most of the file viewer converters, but it's possible to get a feel for the new UI.

    I put together a short (5 minute) demo of some key differences between the new GUI and the original CiderPress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esEHP6Bo8GI

    No real changes to the command-line interface, though a few changes were made behind the scenes.

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  • From magnusfalkirk@21:1/5 to fadden on Thu Jul 13 08:29:40 2023
    On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 3:22:06 PM UTC-5, fadden wrote:
    I've published CiderPress II v0.2, which introduces a usable implementation of the Windows GUI interface. Now working: add, extract, view, delete, create directory, edit attributes, edit blocks/sectors. File viewer export and defaults-setting features
    now work.

    There are still lots of core features missing, including most of the file viewer converters, but it's possible to get a feel for the new UI.

    I put together a short (5 minute) demo of some key differences between the new GUI and the original CiderPress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esEHP6Bo8GI

    No real changes to the command-line interface, though a few changes were made behind the scenes.

    Cool, looking forward the the final version

    magnus

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  • From fadden@21:1/5 to All on Thu Aug 31 11:43:20 2023
    CiderPress II v0.3 is now available. Most of the effort was focused on disk images and filesystems. A five-minute demo of the GUI is available at https://youtu.be/5tE07owhcCc .

    Summary of changes:

    - Added commands: create disk image, create file archive.
    - Added actions: test files, scan disk, save as disk, replace partition with disk image,
    import, export, defragment.
    - Added disk image formats: Trackstar, DiskCopy 4.2.
    - Added multi-partition disk formats: MicroDrive, FocusDrive.
    - Added filesystems: CP/M, Pascal, Gutenberg (read-only), MFS (read-only), RDOS (read-only).
    - Added file archive format: MacBinary (read-only).
    - Added access to removable media (with Admin privilege escalation).
    - Added import/export conversion options editor.
    - Added metadata editing.
    - Updated sector editor.
    - Various GUI improvements.

    Documentation for the new items has been added to https://ciderpress2.com/doc-index.html .

    Most of these were handled in the original CiderPress, but the new implementations are generally superior. DiskCopy is no longer limited to 800KB disks, Trackstar metadata can be edited, CP/M is read-write, RDOS disk recognition is better, etc.

    The multi-disk catalog output should be fairly complete at this point. For a subset of the Asimov repository it generated 97MB of output with --depth=max. The listing can be downloaded from https://faddensoftware.com/asimov-mdc.zip (14MB)

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  • From Polymorph@21:1/5 to fadden on Fri Sep 1 22:26:31 2023
    On Friday, September 1, 2023 at 4:43:23 AM UTC+10, fadden wrote:
    CiderPress II v0.3 is now available. Most of the effort was focused on disk images and filesystems. A five-minute demo of the GUI is available at https://youtu.be/5tE07owhcCc .

    Summary of changes:

    - Added commands: create disk image, create file archive.
    - Added actions: test files, scan disk, save as disk, replace partition with disk image,
    import, export, defragment.
    - Added disk image formats: Trackstar, DiskCopy 4.2.
    - Added multi-partition disk formats: MicroDrive, FocusDrive.
    - Added filesystems: CP/M, Pascal, Gutenberg (read-only), MFS (read-only), RDOS (read-only).
    - Added file archive format: MacBinary (read-only).
    - Added access to removable media (with Admin privilege escalation).
    - Added import/export conversion options editor.
    - Added metadata editing.
    - Updated sector editor.
    - Various GUI improvements.

    Documentation for the new items has been added to https://ciderpress2.com/doc-index.html .

    Most of these were handled in the original CiderPress, but the new implementations are generally superior. DiskCopy is no longer limited to 800KB disks, Trackstar metadata can be edited, CP/M is read-write, RDOS disk recognition is better, etc.

    The multi-disk catalog output should be fairly complete at this point. For a subset of the Asimov repository it generated 97MB of output with --depth=max. The listing can be downloaded from https://faddensoftware.com/asimov-mdc.zip (14MB)

    Great work! Looks like lots of improvements over the original version (which was already an indispensable tool).

    Cheers,
    Mike

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  • From Brian Patrie@21:1/5 to All on Mon Sep 25 23:08:24 2023
    Out of curiosity, why aren't you simply calling it CiderPress 5?

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  • From fadden@21:1/5 to Brian Patrie on Tue Sep 26 07:39:23 2023
    On Monday, September 25, 2023 at 9:08:28 PM UTC-7, Brian Patrie wrote:
    Out of curiosity, why aren't you simply calling it CiderPress 5?

    Because it's a rewrite from scratch, rather than an improved version, and there are differences in how they can be used. CiderPress is a Windows MFC app that can run in WINE on other systems, CiderPress II is a .NET app that (for now) has a Windows GUI
    and a broadly executable command-line interface. Explaining how to use them to somebody else is easier if the recipient doesn't need to know that everything changed in v5.

    Besides, ciderpress2.com was available. :-)

    The debate that I expect will engage scholars for generations is "CiderPress II" vs. "CiderPress 2" vs. "CiderPress ][".

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  • From Oliver Schmidt@21:1/5 to All on Tue Sep 26 16:26:54 2023
    Hi,

    The debate that I expect will engage scholars for generations is
    "CiderPress II" vs. "CiderPress 2" vs. "CiderPress ][".

    ... or "CiderPress //" ;-)

    Regards,
    Oliver

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  • From Mike Spangler@21:1/5 to Oliver Schmidt on Tue Sep 26 11:09:44 2023
    On Tuesday, September 26, 2023 at 9:26:57 AM UTC-7, Oliver Schmidt wrote:
    Hi,
    The debate that I expect will engage scholars for generations is "CiderPress II" vs. "CiderPress 2" vs. "CiderPress ][".
    ... or "CiderPress //" ;-)

    Regards,
    Oliver

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  • From Mike Spangler@21:1/5 to fadden on Tue Sep 26 11:14:01 2023
    On Tuesday, September 26, 2023 at 7:39:25 AM UTC-7, fadden wrote:

    Because it's a rewrite from scratch, rather than an improved version, and there are differences in how they can be used. CiderPress is a Windows MFC app that can run in WINE on other systems, CiderPress II is a .NET app that (for now) has a Windows GUI
    and a broadly executable command-line interface.

    So does CiderPress II work under WINE? The way you wrote that it sounds like no. Windows is OS-non-grata in this house.

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  • From fadden@21:1/5 to Mike Spangler on Tue Sep 26 11:31:19 2023
    On Tuesday, September 26, 2023 at 11:14:04 AM UTC-7, Mike Spangler wrote:
    So does CiderPress II work under WINE? The way you wrote that it sounds like no. Windows is OS-non-grata in this house.

    The command-line interface works under Mac OS and Linux as well as Windows. The CLI has roughly the same set of features as the GUI, including sector editing and file conversions.

    The GUI is currently a Windows WPF app. I don't believe it can work under WINE; .NET programs generally don't, and WPF almost certainly doesn't. The long-term goal is to switch to a platform-neutral GUI toolkit, which would allow it to run on any
    desktop system (and possibly elsewhere), but for a variety of reasons (noted here: https://github.com/fadden/ciderpress2#gui-tool-development) I'm doing v1.0 with WPF.

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  • From fadden@21:1/5 to All on Thu Nov 23 16:21:17 2023
    CiderPress II v0.4 is now available. The main changes were the introduction of drag & drop and development of a full set of file converters. A four-minute demo of the GUI is available at https://youtu.be/P2kss3aOEvs .

    The drag & drop and copy & paste has been something I've wanted to do for a while. Microsoft didn't make it easy, but I think it came out pretty well.

    The file conversions are equivalent or superior to those in the original CiderPress. One new addition is a hi-res font renderer. It takes a 768- or 1024-byte font file for the Apple II or Apple /// and generates a character grid bitmap.

    I also added support for Pascal ProFile Manager, which is the thing that uses storage type 4 on a ProDOS disk. I found a sample that Willi Kusche uploaded a while back (
    https://www.apple.asimov.net/images/programming/pascal/PDDISK29.ZIP ) and used that as a test case.

    Documentation for the various "vintage" file formats can be found on https://ciderpress2.com/doc-index.html .

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  • From fadden@21:1/5 to All on Sat Dec 16 15:31:59 2023
    CiderPress II v1.0.0-alpha1 is now available.

    I've written documentation and tied up various loose ends, and am
    declaring it to be feature-complete. Now it just needs somebody other
    than me to give it some exercise. :-)

    https://ciderpress2.com/

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  • From Oliver Schmidt@21:1/5 to All on Fri Dec 29 10:11:16 2023
    CiderPress II v1.0 is now available.

    1. Congrats!

    2. Thanks :-)

    Oliver

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