Posted By
IstvanV
on 2007-02-16
05:40:25
|  Re: New emulator with Plus/4 support is developed
Creating Start Menu icons will be the job of the Win32 installer (which I will probably implement using the free Nullsoft install system). So you will have the four possible modes (EP/P4 in software/OpenGL mode) as separate icons. Same for associating .prg files (although it may be tricky to get loading those from the command line working without ugly hacks). The ROM images will still be an issue, however, as those are not GPL, and will probably be included in a separate package, and not in the main SourceForge file releases.
The file browse dialogs only start from "My Computer" the first time, since the directories are remembered, and saved on exit. However, directories for different purposes (e.g. tape images, .prg files, snapshots, etc.) are remembered separately, so initially it may seem as if file browsing always starts from "My Computer" - but the next time you open a file of the same type, it will use the last directory, even after quitting the emulator.
I use a cross-platform GUI toolkit, that is why the file browse dialogs look different from native WIndows ones. I may try adding platform specific code to use the native dialog on Win32, though.
Using an exact copy of YAPE shortcut keys may be a problem, because some of those keys are actually used by other machines (the Enterprise 128 does have 8 function keys, as well as an Alt key - so I am left with F9 to F12, as well as these combined with Shift or Control. However, I may consider swapping F11 and F12, as I find it very annoying that when I try to reset YAPE (used to my own keyboard layout) it quits instead without asking.
As of your last qustion: no, I did not disassemble YAPE, or use any part of it. Anyway, reverse engineering a large Win32 executable is not necessarily easier (and definitely not as fun) than figuring out the real hardware; there is also no guarantee at all that YAPE's solutions are correct, making that option even less worth considering. I did have a look at the old open source SDL version, but only as a reference to see how it compares to my own (usually quite different) solutions, and not taking any actual source code - it is very old anyway, and does not implement most of the really tricky aspects of the hardware. Although, it may be possible that I will use the high level (IEC based) floppy emulation from the old GPL version, but if I do so, the author would be credited in the documentation.
In fact, it may make more sense to worry about code being copied not from, but to the closed source version of YAPE, which, while a violation of the GPL, would be difficult to prove not having access to the source code. But I do not accuse others without a good reason, and have more interest in working on and improving my own code.
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