One more thing for 2007

It's the end of the year. After many a dry spell in progress, Deja IIx is finally in a beta state.

Occasionally I need to startup Mac OS 9 (under Classic) to see how Deja ][ would handle a particular issue. It's interesting to compare the two:

Deja ][ was very CPU intensive. It basically took 100% of the CPU. Deja IIx only takes about 8-9%.

Deja ][ screen handling was pokey at best. Deja IIx actually presents a true Apple II screen. In fact, Deja IIx no longer patches the screen writing code in AppleWorks. Instead, it emulates the Apple IIe (hopefully the reason for this will be more apparent in 2008).

Of course, there are other goodies Deja IIx like transparency, window scaling (for those with bad eyes and big monitors). Most of the goodies stem from the changes in the Mac OS in the past ten years. It is amazing how much code was thrown out between Deja ][ and Deja IIx (OK, so I actually didn't do a direct port -- but the point remains the same). There was so much code just to bring up a dialog with gray buttons. It boggles the mind how far we've come.

Well, with the changing times comes one more thing before the year ends. There has always been a custom icon available for your AppleWorks folder, to let you know it was for Deja ][. Well, with Leopard and the new app icon, it was time it was updated as well. Deja IIx includes an install option (under the AppleWorks preference section) to make it easy to get (it installs in your Deja IIx folder).

Here's a peek. And Happy New Year!

Latest Release: Deja IIx 2.0b5

My, what big Icon(s) you have

Before the new year starts, I thought I'd squeeze in one quick release. Beta 2 has lots of goodies:

There is now a UI for adding your own keystrokes. You could do this manually before, but this UI is way easier. The new UI also allows you to reorder the keystrokes via drag-n-drop.

There is now also a UI for working with the new ProDOS Volumes. You can easily hide volumes from AppleWorks (to avoid clutter).

There's also a number of bug fixes. A paused Deja IIx is now clearly indicated (the title bar tells you and the screen is dimmed).

Finally -- Deja IIx has a new icon. It may require a tweak or two, but I think it is much more representative of what the App does than the previous icon. And in the Leopard tradition, the new icon comes in a high-resolution version. Click the icon thumbnails to see them full size.

OLD:


NEW:

Latest Release: Deja IIx 2.0b2

Deja IIx goes beta!

Santa -- all I want for Christmas is a beta release.

All the features are in and most things now work, so I'm officially changing the designation from alpha to beta.

This release adds the big missing feature -- printing. I wrote a TimeOut Mac Print Setup app to configure your printer. There are three different results you can get from printing.

Mac Printer - this prints through the Mac print architecture. The result is printed paper or PDF (if you so choose).

RTF Clipboard - this takes the print results and copies it to the clipboard.

Save to RTF - this takes the print results and allows you to save them to an RTF file.

The new Deja IIx Printer supports Bold, Underline, Superscript, Subscript, Italic (SC1/SC2) and Strikethrough (SC3/SC4). There is a mechanism for mapping characters per inch to actual Mac fonts and size. And you can specify different font/size mappings depending on the final results -- so you can have one set of font mapping for printing and another when copying the results to the clipboard and even another when saving it to a file.

You can look at Deja IIx-PrinterCodes.plist in the Deja IIx support folder. I'm still working on an interface to allow you to edit these more easily -- but that's definitely a beta thing.

Latest Release: Deja IIx 2.0b1

Here comes Santa Claus

It's like Christmas in December!

After many months, I finally had a chance to do some work on Deja IIx. Check out the release notes for all the details.

The biggy: Transcendental functions work again. Yes, you get transcendental functions again and you don't have to give up the TimeOut Calculator for it. I've made some changes so that inverse uppercase displays correctly in the WP (when you use ctrl-T).

Other goodies, PageUp/PageDown/Home/End are all mapped to the AW equivalents. Home/End follow the PC metaphor of beginning/end of line (rather than the Mac's beginning/end of document).

A bunch of User Interface changes to simplify things.

Drawing of the text display is handled a little differently than before. This results in a small increase in the percent of the processor that gets used (tops off around 14% or less when idle), but still a lot less than the 99% that the Deja ][ 1.2 uses when idle.

Most (non-graphics) TimeOut apps should work.

I've tested it under 10.3.9, 10.4.11, and 10.5.1.

Soon, I might even call this a beta!

Latest Release: Deja IIx 2.0a24

Happy Holidays!