CiderPress II Update

[fadden]

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:

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

[magnusfalkirk]

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: http://youtu.be/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

[fadden]

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

.

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)

[Polymorph]

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 http://youtu.be/5tE07owhcCc .
- 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

[Brian Patrie]

Out of curiosity, why aren't you simply calling it CiderPress 5?

[fadden]

Post by Brian Patrie
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 ][".

[Oliver Schmidt]

Hi,

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

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

Regards,
Oliver

[Mike Spangler]

Post by Oliver Schmidt
Hi,

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

... or "CiderPress //" ;-)
Regards,
Oliver

[Mike Spangler]

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.

[fadden]

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.

[fadden]

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

.

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 .

[Bill Chatfield]

Post by fadden
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

Here's a picture of it running in Wine on Fedora Linux:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1osMqS_mjZ84OEF-BBTq5GAFO0vTSErD2/view?usp=sharing

[fadden]

Post by Bill Chatfield

Post by fadden
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

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1osMqS_mjZ84OEF-BBTq5GAFO0vTSErD2/view?usp=sharing

I didn't think Wine could handle .NET binaries. This is excellent! Did you need to do anything special to get it working?

This suggests it might also be possible to run 6502bench on Mac/Linux, though that's using the older ".NET Framework" rather than the newer ".NET Core".

[Bill Chatfield]

Post by Bill Chatfield

Post by fadden
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

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1osMqS_mjZ84OEF-BBTq5GAFO0vTSErD2/view?usp=sharing

I didn't think Wine could handle .NET binaries. This is excellent! Did you need to do anything special to get it working?
This suggests it might also be possible to run 6502bench on Mac/Linux, though that's using the older ".NET Framework" rather than the newer ".NET Core".

I didn't do anything special. I think the self contained package was helpful. One of the problems with Wine is getting all the Windows components installed correctly that you need to run a program. I used the 32-bit version also. I have Wine 8.19. Fedora usually includes the latest version.

[fadden]

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/

[fadden]

CiderPress II v1.0 is now available.

https://ciderpress2.com/

[Oliver Schmidt]

Post by fadden
CiderPress II v1.0 is now available.

1. Congrats!

2. Thanks :-)

Oliver