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Published: 30 June 2012

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I know I should instead get KickAss up and running correctly, but I had so many new ideas and input in the past two weeks that I had to try out a few things. In particular, I found that supporting others and getting support becomes more critical as the IDE grows. I have worked intensively on Apple II support and have a prototype running. Thanks to Sean, Nick, Brendan, and Robert for their support. The significant steps towards improving WUDSN IDE features are related to three projects: AppleCommander, JavaHexEditor, and Jexel.
I am working on my contributions for all of them, so the subsequent versions of these tools are ready to be included in WUDSN IDE. This way, I can support other projects, keeping the WUDSN IDE's codebase small. AppleCommander will be used to create disk images, i.e., the IDE will learn to put the output files directly onto bootable images. JavaHexEditor will be refactored, and its core will be the basis for the improved Hex Editor in WUDSN IDE. It will be much faster, functionally complete (cut/copy/paste), and work for files or arbitrary size. Finally, Jexel will be used as an expression parser for a built-in calculator/cheat sheet inspired by Barbarossa's feedback at CSDB.

Besides this, two more video tutorials are available now.

Part 8: New Features in Version 1.6.2

Part 9: Source Level Debugging

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Published: 28 June 2012

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Six weeks to go! On the 10th-12th of August, Fujiama Party 2012 is planned -  A long weekend with Atari and other nerdy systems and people in one place. Visit the official website, register yourself, and spread the word. Unfortunately, it's also the weekend when Evoke takes place so I won't be at Evoke (of course :-). The bad news is that I didn't finish it because of this. The good news is I have enough time to get lost entirely in WUDSN IDE enhancements.

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Published: 12 June 2012

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Today, it is exactly three years since I released version 1.0.0 of WUDSN IDE - (to himself) Wow. I can safely say that I never thought it would become so rich in features and widely used in terms of platform. I am sure it would have failed if I had started with these goals in mind. The same goes for the video tutorials. I started them because I found it too hard to re-write the feature list into proper documentation. And they turned out to be how to get information to the consumers. With the new recording equipment, this is also easy for me, and I plan to create a "Coding an 8-bit oldschool cracktro in 15 minutes" tutorial soon after the next release.

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Published: 09 June 2012

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After my vacation, I was sufficiently relaxed to sit down and decide to get ONE thing DONE instead of starting the next cool - but never finished - thing. So here's the update for which C64 people have been waiting for (too long). The parser has been extended to handle the block definition of KickAss. Also, the Apple II support and the dynamic online help are stable now. Here's the complete list of enhancements and fixes.

Menu

• New context menu "Convert" for converting all decimal, hexadecimal ($123), and binary (%010101) numbers in a selection into a standardized byte-aligned representation.
• Context menu entries "Convert" and "Sort" for text editors are now also available via the main menu "Edit/Sort".
• Context menu entries "Convert" and "Sort" prompt for removing the read-only property of a file when required.
• For all contributed menu entries, the mnemonics are maintained correctly now.

Compilers

• Generic block support for KickAss, i.e., detection of "{" and "}", so the content outline and the source folding work correctly now. Proper use of white spaces after instructions and a maximum of one block per source line is required.
• Download archive compilers.zip updated with KickAss 3.25 and CA65 2.13.3 (in preparation).
• Log file parsing implemented where missing and improved towards include file handling for ASM6, ATASM, DASM, MADS, KickAss, and XASM.
• Default compiler options for XASM are extended by "/p" to enable fully qualified file names, so error messages are associated with the correct file.

Preferences

• The preferences tabs for not configured compilers now show the message "Path to ... compiler is not set in the 'Assembler' preferences". This simplifies the configuration because. Users are not distracted by options for compilers they do not use. I would have preferred hiding the unused tabs completely, but SWT does not support this.

Emulators

• The Apple II hardware is now fully supported. The emulators AppleWin, JACE, and Virtu are available with defaults in the preferences.

Disk Image Creation

• When compiling and running for the Apple II hardware, the IDE automatically creates a bootable ".dsk" disk image in addition to the object file. The creation of the disk image allows direct execution in Apple II emulators, which would not be possible otherwise because there is no such thing as an executable file format on Apple II. Instead, the information about a program's type and start address is only contained in the directory structure. The Java-based API of AppleCommander 1.3.5 is used for creating the disk image.

Disk Image Editors

• A disk image editor for Apple II disk images based on the SWT version of AppleCommander 1.3.5 has been added.

Online Help

• The extended section "WUDSN IDE" includes mainly the documentation from the website.
  • Video links to the tutorial and release news
  • Features
  • Installation
  • FAQ
  • Credits/Links
• The new section, "Assemblers," includes information on the supported assemblers and their properties.
  • General - links, syntax, and support features
  • Instructions - all supported instructions, including their descriptions, grouped by type
  • Manual - direct access to the PDF, HTML, or text manual file or files that are part of the compiler installation
• The new section, "Hardware Platforms", includes information on the supported hardware and the corresponding emulators and links.
  • Reference documentation - Hardware-specific PDF, HTML, or text files with CPU and customer chips reference sheets and programming guides

Fixes

• The first character of numbers is now correctly highlighted in #123.
• The source file include directive "INCSRC", is now correctly detected for ASM6.