WUDSN IDE update 1.4.2 released

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Published: Sunday, 11 October 2009 00:00

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Once again it's early morning and I'm finally done with packaging the new version. As usual you can update the feature via the update site. Note that the file format of the ".cnv" files for the graphics editor alpha version has changed incompatibly - and probably also not for the the last time ;-)

Features: See the tab "Features" on WUDSN IDE for screen shots

• The context menu entries "Open Folder", "Open With Hex Editor", "Open Graphics Editor" are now positioned as they should be in the project explorer context menu
• New context menu in the hex editor with the entry "Copy as Hex Values"
• New context menu entry "Open With Graphics Editor" in the hyperlink navigation for binary includes
• The graphics editor has an improved layout, better checks and supported saving the resulting image as ".png" file
• The dependency to the "org.eclipse.jdt.code" plugin has been removed, so you can run WUDSN IDE in a minimal Eclipse installation without the Java Development Toolkit (JDT). I use this for example to run Eclipse in an Ubuntu Linux image test bed in Virtualbox
• Separate content types for Atari 8-bit and C64 source files
• Separate compiler preferences pages for Atari 8-bit and C64 compilers
• Preliminary support for the C64 compiler "ACME". It will take some to to complete this since it support quite complex syntax. But I have managed MADS, so I'm going to manage this once also - and code a HomeCon invitation on C64 as a tribute maybe
  

  Hardware	Compiler	Download	Help	Compiling	Single-Line Comments	Block Comments	Strings	Opcodes	Directives	Compile Log Parsing	Content Outline	Hyperlink Navigation	Label Definition Files Format
  C64	ACME	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes: ;|	n/a	Yes: "	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	ACME

Fixes:

• The line end comments are now used as description for source and binary includes in the content outline
• The "Open Folder" context menu entry works again, bug was introduced in version 1.4.0
• The folder which contains the output file and the symbols file is refreshed automatically after compiling to ensure that the Eclipse resource cache is in synch with the file system

WUDSN IDE update 1.4.2 announced

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Published: Friday, 09 October 2009 00:00

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As you can see it took far more time but now the features tab is updated. I have added all the new features of version 1.4.0 and also the features from version 1.4.2 which is going to be released next weekend. Originally I had planned to use "PNG" as the file format for the conversion files of the graphics editor. The idea was to store the converted image as thumbnail in the conversion file itself. This way you could have watched the conversion files in the Explorer directly without creating separate image files. I got the idea from the nice game Crayon Physics which I bought some time ago. There they use the "tEXt" chunks of the PNG file to store the level information together with the level map thumbnail. Unfortunately it turned out that - even after tweaking the registry - Windows refused to display thumbnails of PNG files if the file extensions was ".cnv" and not ".png". And since I want to keep the focus of this project I decided not to start creating C# code or DLLs to make that work. So I had to revert all my changes for the file format and that is the reason why there is no official version 1.4.1.
A major enhancement of the forthcoming version is the result of the past two HomeCon parties where I met many very nice people using Commodore machines. Some of them were very interested in WUDSN IDE an Draco provided me the ACME compiler and samples source (after he actually bought an Atari 800 XL, too ;-). So I added the support for multiple types of hardware, i.e. besides Atari 8-bit compilers now also C64 compilers and emulators can be added.

WUDSN IDE update 1.4.0 released

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Published: Sunday, 13 September 2009 00:00

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It's 4 am and the new release is finally out. I'll just summarize the new features and updates here and update the "Features" tab tomorrow since I really feel like I ought to be in bed now ;-)

Features:

• Support for MADS and XASM directives is complete now. The definitions of folding and outline sections are now based on a descriptive configuration which can be easily adapted. This will make is quite easy to add additional platforms and compiler in the future with reasonable effort. The remaining coding for the parsing of MADS source for example is now down to 16 (!) lines.
  
• Every type of section now has an own type icon in the content outline and the content outline now also recursively parses source include files on the fly. This allows the drill down into include files without even opening them. It is also the basis for the planned future features macro syntax highlighting and forward navigation. In the toolbar of the content outline, there is a toggle button for sorting the sections and labels. The state of the button is persisted automatically along with the respective source file. For files which do not have a setting yet, the setting from the currently opened file will be used.
  
• The content outline folding and positioning now remains stable as you type. For example if you introduce a new label in a local section which is open, the tree will insert that label in the correct position and will keep the opened sections as they are.
• The restriction that opcodes or directives must not start in the first column no longer applies.
• The console for the compiler now has a localized title "Compiler Console" and is brought to front automatically when the compiler is started. This prevents the compiler output from being hidden behind other consoles in the console view.
• Single line comment for the current line selection can be toggled using "CTRL-7" or the context menu entry "Toggle Comments".
• The "Open With Hex Editor" menu entry now closes an existing editor in case the file is already opened and thereby forces the file to be opened with the hex editor. In addition the hex editor is set as the default editor this one file. As a consequence double clicking the file in the package explorer will open it automatically with the hex editor, no matter which type of file is actually is. This saves you from always using the context menu, just because the file has no known file type. You can change the default editor again by just using the "Open With" context menu entry.
• The new graphics plugin is included as alpha-version. You can open the "Graphics Editor" via the context menu entry "Open with Graphics Editor" just as for the hex editor. Saving images and conversion from an image to files is no supported yet. The editor will try to default to a suitable converter based on the file size, file name and content. For example files of size 1024 and 2048 are assumed to be fonts. Files of size 7680 or 7684 bytes are assumed to be MicroPainter pictures. I even hacked in a support for opening compressed MicroPainter images based on the source of the excellent "FAIL (First Atari Image Library)" tool by FOX and his friends. Note that it works only for opening by now, not for conversion. I really like to say thanks a lot to FOX for the tips and the example files.
  

Fixes:

• The "Assembler" menu is visible now only if an Assembler editor is active. The contained entries and their short cuts are disabled if no Assembler editor is active.
• The output file is not deleted anymore before the compiler is started, instead it is only checked for being writeable. This allows for direct compilation into an existing ATR image.
• The name of the application used to open the output file is now included in the info message.

Finally Progressing - The Graphics Plugin

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Published: Thursday, 10 September 2009 00:00

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Its been a long time since the last update so here are some news. The assembler and editor part is almost complete with many major and minor improvements especially regarding MADS. The whole project has been restructured to allow the addition of C64 assemblers and the the new "Graphics" plugin. This plugin is what I've always wanted to have ever since I started cross-platform development back in 1990. Since almost 20 years now I've been converting graphics to and from my Atari using "for" loops and any language you can think of. But I never got to complete the interactive converter with parameters I dreamed of. The first trial was done in the language "E" on my Amiga, the next was done in Delphi on my PC both never could be finished. But now there Eclipse and SWT and finally there is a first working version. To be honest some parts of SWT are far more complex than back in the days on my Amiga or with Delphi controls. For example it took me 3 days and 2 tutorials to get a properly scrolling and resizing image area. But on the other hand you get really high execution speed, flexibility and it will run under any operating system.
The alpha version will be part of WUDSN IDE 1.4.0. It includes loading and displaying fonts, bitmaps and sprites from Atari and C64 and the creation of ".cnv" conversion parameter files so you can repeat the conversion for example when the original files have changed. The conversion will also work in the other direction of course. New converters are pluggable via an extension point.