CodeWalrus

Since the release of TI's thin, light, ez80-powered TI-84 Plus CE (http://www.cemetech.net/tools/ti84pce) graphing calculator, I have received countless YouTube comments, Cemetech PMs and posts, and emails about when Doors CS / Doors CSE (http://dcs.cemetech.net) would be available for the new calculator. Stumbling blocks including technical limitations related to the new calculator and my own lack of free time had forced me to say that I wasn't sure when or if a version of Doors CS/CSE would be available for the TI-84 Plus CE. For a long time, I hoped that an App key might become available from TI so that there might be a TI-84 Plus CE App version of Doors CS/CSE. It appears that that's not forthcoming, so in the meantime, I've been working on a port of Doors CS/CSE as a program, to be called Doors CE. Like the much-celebrated Cesium (https://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11995) from Cemetech Expert MateoConLechuga (http://www.cemetech.net/forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=6066), the new Doors CE is visible in the [PRGM] menu, and can be started by running a prgmA that Doors CE creates when you install it.

Since the beginning of October, I have been documenting (https://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11997) my progress on putting together a Doors CE port for the TI-84 Plus CE. The following features have been completed, delta a little debugging:

• Launcher: Doors CE creates a special launcher when it is installed and archives its bulk as an AppVar to leave RAM for user programs. The launcher also switches between Doors CE and assembly programs when the user executes a program.
  
• Desktop: Doors CE can display BASIC and Assembly programs on its desktop, list an arbitrary number of programs, and scroll. Locked, archived, and hidden programs are correctly annotated as such. Folders can be created, and files can be moved between folders. Programs can be created, renamed, duplicated, deleted, and even edited. The clock works.
  
• Doors CE and Options Menus: The Doors CE menu ("start" menu) works correctly, and each of its sub-menus functions. The Options menu works, and most of the options in Options do what they're supposed to.
  
• Executing nostub BASIC programs: BASIC programs can be executed from the Doors CE desktop from RAM or Archive.
  
• Executing nostub ASM programs: ASM programs can be executed from the Doors CE desktop from RAM or Archive. Writeback is correctly performed.

There are a few features that still need to be added, and they're big ones:

• HomeRun: The HomeRun feature that lets programs be executed from the homescreen, regardless of whether they're BASIC or ASM, Archived or in RAM, or require libraries is incomplete (but nearly done). BASIC programs currently work; ASM programs do not.
  
• xLIBCE: The venerable Patrick "tr1p1ea (https://www.cemetech.net/forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=1961)" Prendergast is working hard to port xLIBC to the TI-84 Plus CE for inclusion in Doors CE. Since he has a busy job and a young family, I appreciate his willingness to work on xLIBCE in his minuscule free time.
  
• Celtic 2 CE: I will be porting the Celtic 2 CSE libraries from Doors CSE. With the permission of authors like MateoConLechuga, I may add additional functions, including ToString (https://www.cemetech.net/programs/index.php?mode=file&id=1403).
  
• ASM/C libraries: MateoConLechuga has also strongly hinted that he is completing tools that will make it easy to use ASM and C libraries in programs without explicit shell support. Doors CE will be leveraging this time- and effort-saving breakthrough from Mateo.

If you still need to get psyched about Doors CE, enjoy the video below. Although I don't have a concrete release date for Doors CE, I do plan to get it out in the early part of 2016. I'd be happy to field suggestions and answer questions in the attached topic or in the Doors CE 9 Development (https://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11997) thread, where development updates will continue to be posted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rg3lZ4eSz0

I'm glad this is coming along well. I was worried last Summer that if the signing key was not released, that DCE 9 would never happen, but I'm happy that workarounds have been found to allow it. I'm definitively looking forward for the xLIBCE/Celtic 2 part of the shell since those libs were very handy for First Fantasy CSE and they give many more options to BASIC coders, and I am curious about what the speed difference with xLIBCE will be compared to its CSE counterpart.


How large is DCE 9 so far on a calculator (RAM and Archive)?

prgmA is 22 bytes in RAM, the launcher (prgmDOORSCE) is 267 bytes in RAM, and AppVar DCEMAIN (which contains the shell itself) is 20,651 bytes. I wouldn't be surprised if it grows to as much as 38K once xLIBCE and Celtic 2 CE get stuffed in there.

Nice work ;)

Quote from: KermMartian on December 10, 2015, 08:23:10 PM
prgmA is 22 bytes in RAM, the launcher (prgmDOORSCE) is 267 bytes in RAM, and AppVar DCEMAIN (which contains the shell itself) is 20,651 bytes. I wouldn't be surprised if it grows to as much as 38K once xLIBCE and Celtic 2 CE get stuffed in there.

That seems good. DCSE was 49 KB if I recall, which would put DCE 11 KB lower. I assume it's due to it not being an app split into 16 KB pages, right? It's not that I really mind larger space, but for some people, every byte counts and the calc has less Flash than the CSE, so a size decrease is always welcome :)


What I am curious about is how you and tr1p1ea will manage to get all hooks working outside of a flash application without stability issues. I always had the impression from what people said in the past that getting parser hooks to work and install from a 8xp file was extremely challenging.

QuoteIf you still need to get psyched about Doors CE

I would be, but I don't have a CE :P Regardless, nice work as always. However if I may, the icons look kind of dated. You could go with a slightly altered numix icon theme! That would rock.

I actually like the icons personally. It might be Windows 98-ish but it's a calculator so I thought it was quite fitting. :P

For the curious, Celtic 2 CE (previously Celtic 2 CSE) has been completely ported into Doors CE, so other than xLIBCE, the shell is coming along swiftly. Via the relevant Cemetech topic (https://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=243967#243967):

Quote from: KermMartianI tested and repaired more of the Celtic 2 CE functions this morning, as edited into the post above.

• ReadLine: Ported, tested, fully working for unarchived and archived variables.
  
• ReplaceLine: Ported, tested, fully working, including for first, last, and other lines.
  
• InsertLine: Ported, tested, fully working, including for first, last, and other lines.
  
• SpecialChars: Ported, tested, fully working.
  
• CreateVar: Ported, tested, correct creates AppVars and programs. Fully working.
  
• ArcUnarcVar: Ported, tested, fully working.
  
• DeleteVar: Ported, tested, fully working.
  
• DeleteLine: Ported, tested, works most of the time, crashes when deleting the last line of a variable. Edit: Since I'm still debugging without an emulator for now, pending variable uploading and breakpoints in CEmu, my guess is that [strike]the HitEOF check in replaceline is causing replaceline to skip the jump from Replace to Delete[/strike] looks unlikely. Edit: Found problem with computing the EOF (end of file) of variables, repaired; now DeleteLine works correctly.
  
• VarStatus: Ported, tested, now works, with _FormEReal equate corrected in ti84pce.inc.
  
• BufSprite: Ported, tested, fully working.
  
• BufSpriteSelect: Ported, tested, fully working.
  
• ExecArcPrgm: Ported, tested, fully working.
  
• DispColor: Ported, tested, fully working. My only qualm was that I had to flip the textFGcolor and textBGcolor equates in the include file for it to work. Has anyone else encountered this?

If anyone has any thoughts on the latter, I'd appreciate it.

Edit: Testing 16-bit colors for DispColor (first and second lines) and OS-equated colors like RED and BLACK (third line):


Edit #2: Testing PaletteSprite by running Frogger 4.0 for the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition on a TI-84 Plus CE, unmodified.

That is great news. Good job. I saw that you were in the process of testing Celtic libs lately and I'm happy that you managed to get most to work without much hassle, especially considering DCE9 is not an APP. :)

Can't wait for this! Doors XXX is my favorite shell. Used it on my old TI-84+.

Hello if you are talking about the door ce 9
it looks good but there is one problem why would you say something about it when its going to take a long time   
can you at least put the the first version out .
Thank you!!
good job it look good by the way  :thumbsup:

It's far from being complete enough to be stable. Many features are probably still buggy or not present in the program and could crash your calculator horribly if any bug is bad enough. Kerm will make sure it's 100% bug-free before releasing it, to ensure it doesn't damage anyone's calc (not that this is likely to happen, but we never know, plus people might lose their data anyway). I think the first version will most likely be posted on Cemetech first too, then later everywhere else.

Great news. It just keeps getting better.

Dr. Kerm is a machine!!! :thumbsup:

Er actually @Ranman this news is from last year. It's just that Alvajoy123 bumped the topic now :P. However, there were multiple hints of progress in recent months in the Cemetech thread, which is still good news nonetheless.

I really can't wait to see how fast Sorcery of Uvutu and my tunnel game runs on the CE.

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on March 23, 2017, 01:37:09 AM
Er actually @Ranman this news is from last year. It's just that Alvajoy123 bumped the topic now :P. However, there were multiple hints of progress in recent months in the Cemetech thread, which is still good news nonetheless.

I really can't wait to see how fast Sorcery of Uvutu and my tunnel game runs on the CE.

LOL. I was hoodwinkered. :ninja:

My comment still stands...

Ranman needs to find this news on Cemetech now.

Quote from: Ranman on March 23, 2017, 01:39:17 AM

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on March 23, 2017, 01:37:09 AM
Er actually @Ranman this news is from last year. It's just that Alvajoy123 bumped the topic now :P. However, there were multiple hints of progress in recent months in the Cemetech thread, which is still good news nonetheless.

I really can't wait to see how fast Sorcery of Uvutu and my tunnel game runs on the CE.

LOL. I was hoodwinkered. :ninja:

My comment still stands...

Ranman needs to find this news on Cemetech now.

This is the most recent todo list: https://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=255815#255815 . Also xLIBCE is being made by tr1p1ea

oh dear... the good old time when I discovered xLib and spent >10h a day writing programs  O.O