ChristopherDrum

Thanks, I hope you enjoy the series!

Continuing with my retro productivity software blog, Stone Tools: https://stonetools.ghost.io

I was getting a little bored of retrocomputing discourse being so centered on gaming, so I'm exploring the productivity software of the 8/16-bit era. I put real effort into learning and using the programs, giving my light-hearted but heartfelt assessment of its form and function for both its time and today.

Using the software inevitably gets me thinking about other things, and I explore those threads as well. For example, "Superbase on the C64" also discusses the legacy and promise of "the paperless office." A couple of other posts got some nice traction here on HN, notably "Deluxe Paint on the Amiga" and "VisiCalc on the Apple 2".

I'm hoping to build a strong monthly readership, so I'm putting in the work. It's been up for two months and five posts now, with a new one coming at the end of this week.

Author here. I address data portability in a step-by-step process in the blog post. Long story short, it’s too much hassle while still being imperfect. If data sharing is important, it’s not a good choice. If you’re content to build a little spreadsheet that exists solely within the VisiCalc and VisiClone world, then it might suffice. I suspect the average user has higher baseline expectations than VisiCalc can deliver. You need to really try it out yourself (Dan Bricklin has the 80-column DOS version for free on his site) and see what it lacks firsthand.

Author here. If not AppleWorks, Multiplan, Excel, or Lotus, then possibly “Full Impact?”

Author here. Thanks to OP for linking to my recent post and to the HN community for visiting and sharing their personal anecdotes. I’m glad to see a continuing shared interest in these classic productivity tools. I don’t blog about games at all, just retro productivity software, so if that floats your boat you may enjoy the other posts on my site.

Author here. Yes, I’m glad someone agrees with my assessment on the documentation quality. It pulls off a pretty amazing hat-trick, considering it was the first exposure anyone had with such a program.

`sc` is the only option I’m aware of that is like a “spreadsheet vim” though there are likely others.

Interestingly enough, the original name of sc was . . . wait for it . . . vc

Author here. That is kind of one of my reasons for starting the blog, is to see what may have been forgotten in old productivity software.

Author here. Sorry to disappoint you.

I assure you it was there from the start. No worries.

Recently, I've been a little disillusioned with how retro-computing discourse feels dominated by two things: hardware and games. In an honest assessment of my own life with computers, there's so much more to it than that.

Productivity software (Deluxe Paint, VisiCalc, PageMaker, etc.) shaped how the world worked and, in my case, changed the course of my career. I wanted to understand this software more deeply, so I started a blog to do exactly that.

I do not write about games; I write about the other stuff.

Stone Tools revisits and re-examines productivity software from roughly 1977-1995, a fertile period when developers pushed machines to their limits, experimented wildly, and were still figuring out what kinds of software people even needed. The tone is lighthearted but open-minded: I spend weeks learning the software and use it for real work, while considering its modern-day utility (if any!).

This week's article is about "Electric Pencil on the TRS-80" - https://stonetools.ghost.io/electricpencil-trs80

The first article, "Deluxe Paint on the Amiga" was posted by someone recently and was nicely received. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45144129

Other projects of mine that resonated with HN, for the curious. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43677909 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37746663

I hope this blog is of interest and value to the community.

The PICO-8 actually has 32 colors from which we can choose any 16. I understand that making use of the default palette is the article's intent; I'm just thinking aloud.

If one were wanting to render an image on the PICO-8 itself, the ideal algorithm would select the best 16 colors from the full 32-color palette which, when dithered, produce the most perceptually accurate version of the original image in 128x128 pixels. Were I a smarter man I would create this, but alas.

Author here. Thanks for reading, and I'm happy you enjoyed it! I've never touched Animator, but I'm intrigued now.

Author here. I made explicitly certain to credit her in the image caption from the start; that wasn't added later, it was there from the very moment I posted. I also mention her again, and note the relationship to the Tut image, in a quote later from Dan Silva.

Stone Tools author here. I did mention that web app twice in the story, though I didn't catch that "Preview" function!

Correct. I did not say anything about the circle tool being slow.

Author here. It's very kind of OP to post this on my behalf. I'm happy it is resonating with people. Maybe I should have self-promoted here sooner, but I thought I should put a little more meat on the blog's bones before posting it here. Maybe I was wrong!

Author here. I did not say circles don't draw well. I said that "swiftly-drawn curves are flattened" and likened it to a "large wash." By that I mean long, swift, edge-to-edge brush strokes. Perhaps the use of the word "curves" confused that point, but the natural arcs of human hand/wrist motion are what I wanted to evoke. I also noted a "fat brush in symmetry mode" exhibits the same effect. I can attest to two points about that from firsthand experience:

1. That was also true on original hardware (when I owned the system in my younger days). I distinctly remember having to slow down certain movements to let the system keep pace, depending on speed and complexity of motion. 2. The effect is drastically improved (and I note so in the article) by choosing a faster virtual CPU.

I have seriously mixed feelings about this kind of philanthropy. Yes, it is good that he's going to give his wealth away like this. I do not want to diminish his efforts in that!

But also, why collect such wealth in the first place? What was the point? Was the money really better off being hoarded by one person with the fingers crossed hope that they'll spend it altruistically someday? The existence of the wealth imbalance itself, and the general practice of wealth hoarding, are frustrating counterbalances to the good of giving it away.

I am the author of PicoCalc. I had no idea anyone had posted it here on HN, that it had so many points and comments, or that anyone still remembers it. Makes my day :)

As a side-note to the Scott Adams interpreter and the struggle of writing in BASIC, it should be noted that Scott Adams's original work was in fact in BASIC. He published that source code in BYTE Magazine, should anyone wish to poke around and see what was required to get a game and parser working.

https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1980-12/page/n193/...

TV series, absolutely; I've actually never heard the radio program. It aired on PBS in my area along with Monty Python, The Young Ones, and other shows from "across the pond."

Oh wow, thank you for the clarification. I completely didn't even consider to audit for that in the ZIP source (though the ALL CAPS maybe should have been my hint). I'll update the post with this and another small thing another player found.

Wonderful, thanks for playing!

Great! Glad to hear we have a simple solution for this issue. It is interesting to note your trouble, because another player in this post is running Arch and says it worked flawlessly. I guess Mono gets in the way a little.

What setup are you running it on? That will help with troubleshooting. Or, if you prefer, feel free to file an issue on the project repo and we can hash it out there.

https://github.com/ChristopherDrum/pez/issues

Fantastic to hear! Thanks for the kind words and for checking it out.

My absolute favorite text adventure in recent years is Lost Pig. Alas, it is not compatible with the UNIX port this post is about, but it is a delightful game with a unique comedic voice.

Yeah, the "porting" part was pretty trivial, all things considered. Any difficulty was really only as a consequence of certain patterns being unfamiliar or evolved. Once those patterns were identified, it was only "roll up your sleeves and do the work" to get it going again.

Working on this kind of got me re-thinking my approach to my personal projects again. What can I do today to best ensure my own code will be this easy to run in 30 years? As a corollary to that, what can I build today that will be interesting enough to want to run again in 30 years?

It had never occurred to me that someone might have the game be their first HHGTTG experience over some other media. For me, the BBC television series was my gateway into the world, then the game (I was already hooked on Infocom by then), then the books.

HHGTTG is a .z3 game and is compatible with this project's build of the Infocom source, should you get the urge to play again in another 30 years.

Interesting to know, thanks. My intention with that comment was in pondering about vms distributed commercially in the home market, which I don't think I made clear enough in the post. :/