| Posted By
Spektro
on 2020-11-04
04:40:20
 |  Plus/4 GUI
Hello,
I found an interesting Plus/4 program named SIMPLE from "Your Commodore" magazine (August 1988 issue, page 14): ftp://ftp.infania.net/Documentation/Magazines/Your%20Commodore/Your_Commodore_Issue_47_1988_Aug.pdf
SIMPLE is actually a collection of machine language programs which allow you to build a pointer controlled graphical user interface. A GUI demo program is also included.
Is this program missing from the Plus/ World's collection?
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2020-11-04
07:31:59
| Re: Plus/4 GUI
Yes, it's missing.
Or at least it was until now, since I just added it into the db - but the PRG file is still missing of course, along with the magazine entry - and the countless other magazine entries we haven't added, plus any and all type-in programs published in those. (I just recently discovered a Dutch magazine called Commodore Info... I added one random entry I found in the first issue I checked called Annuiteiten. I should be adding these to the site, "soon", "when I have time".)
Spektro, it would be really great if you could just add these into the database yourself  It's probably even less typing than making a forum post about it  This goes for everyone else; if you have free time, please help out with data entry. Plus/4 World is a collaborative effort!
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Posted By
MMS
on 2020-11-04
15:49:39
 | Re: Plus/4 GUI
Nice find! wow, pretty long code
I suppose it is fast and snappy due to machine code routines. The sprite could be interesting to see it is somehow mixed with the background "on the fly", or just hides the character behind it.
PS: interestingely just in the last weeks I made some mockups, how a GUI would look like with a small modification of the PETSCII charset. (certainly it needs further finetuning eg. drawing routine able to realize the font behind it, etc, it is the minimal level change of fontset)
The style is mainly from Amstrad PCW16 GUI "Rosanne", that was a Z80 based strange machine (thanks to Litwr who showed it to me!)
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2020-11-04
16:04:25
| Re: Plus/4 GUI
That looks pretty neat.
I'm pretty sure Mark's program (SIMPLE) is what he used in RAP4, so if you want to see the UI in action, that's probably a good bet.
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Posted By
Spektro
on 2020-11-04
22:03:11
| Re: Plus/4 GUI
I couldn't figure out how to add cover and page scans to the site's magazine database. Is that something that only administrators can do?
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2020-11-04
22:28:38
| Re: Plus/4 GUI
Yeah, most things that involve uploading new files have to be done by us unfortunately. The Site Upload is now very reliable though and does work for a few things.
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Posted By
MMS
on 2020-11-06
14:27:00
| Re: Plus/4 GUI
Update: I checked it and a nice piece of code! the character level movement of the sprite is not annyoing at all, and you always know what you select.
The sprite is well defined and always visible.
The main code is not BASIC, but 100% ML, as I see. so no surprise it is so fast :-)
RAP4 seems to be a nice SW. I've never seen it, though I never had any sound I wanted to record on +4.
Unfortunately the disc contains no samples or songs, so it is pretty hard to start with.
(would be a good idea to release one with few samples, to able to try it's potentials, without hardware or the prerecoded samples it is not possible)
I can say Mark's SIMLPE GUI is more elegant than my Rosanne copy, and takes less useful space from the screen.
Certainly it is a ready solution with ready standardized ML (probably fast) subroutines.
Definitely it needs more attention/use and like from us
Update2:
just for the sake of small improvements I modified 4 more characters to improve the look of this GUI. (I was not 100% happy with the previous one)
Because this fontset includes low and big charsets too, has much less free characters to play with.
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