Status of Zap
David Pitt (102) 743 posts |
The following is a post by James Aylett, a Zap developer, and is copied from the zap-users mailing list. quote I’m aware that some people have done work on Zap since then. (A couple of people have also asked over the years for permission to distribute Zap, some of them I believe with modifications, since it doesn’t have an open source license and so these kinds of things are murky.) So it’s possible that there are people out there who could take this over. CVS is, for most people, a dim and distant memory. I’ve converted the old repo to git and put it on github (https://github.com/jaylett/zap) for the time being. I will be closing pull requests against it (so please don’t), but I’m quite happy to transfer it into a github org if others want to take it over. It’s entirely possible that the CVS-to-git conversion process didn’t work properly, so I won’t be getting rid of the old CVS repo; it just won’t be available to others from around October this year. The website is frozen in its current state, and I’ve added a notice saying that. (The dynamic source for the website is in the git repo.) The mailing lists have had almost zero activity recently, and since I no longer have any time for Zap myself, I’d like to close them down (just keeping on top of spam and subscription requests has been work, and indeed recently I’ve not even been able to manage new subscription requests properly — the problem being that almost all of them are actually spam). The archives are currently (and, from what I remember, deliberately) private, so we should be cautious about whether to make them available elsewhere. (Again, I’m not going to delete my copies of the archives, in case anyone finds a use for them in future. There were at time considerable technical discussions which might be of interest if anyone is considering further development.) Since I believe there are people still using Zap actively, it might be an idea for someone to set up a single new mailing list so there is someone for people to discuss issues going forward. I’m of course more than happy to add something to the git repo to aid people finding it. |
Chris Hall (132) 3554 posts |
There certainly are people using !Zap actively on RISC OS, so you are correct. |
Sprow (202) 1155 posts |
I don’t get on with Zap myself, preferring another brand of washing powder, but maybe a volunteer could step forward to talk to James along these lines:
Good luck, but don’t sit around thinking somebody else will do this, they’re all non-programming tasks. |
André Timmermans (100) 655 posts |
I hope Tank reads this column so that he can update these sources with his patches to make Zap work on modern machines. Unfortunately he only updated his own site with the 1.48 tnk-7 sources, while he released 1.48 tnk-11. |
Chris Hall (132) 3554 posts |
!Zap 1.48 tnk 7 seems to work OK on my Titanium. What is the problem please? |
Colin Ferris (399) 1809 posts |
Thanks for that pointer to Tnk-11 – missed that upgrade. I see that the Zap module contains a ‘SWP’ instruction – might upset ‘Pie the third’. |
André Timmermans (100) 655 posts |
The problem, who knows? Tank made extra corrections like the one mentionned here https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/3943?page=4#posts-50708 but there is no documented fixes nor updated sources. Anyway I had to combine ZapComplete.zip + ZapLatest.zip + ZeroZap.zip to get a working version on the Pi3 (with some problems like crashing when reading obey files). |
jan de boer (472) 78 posts |
If you can do without the colouring by the ZapObey module, remove !ZapObey from !Zap.Modules. Then you can edit Obey files. The SWP instruction maybe can be replaced by LDR/STR, I don’t know how important the atomic character of SWP is for zap but I applied this patch to zap: www.tellima.nl/riscos/. (Patches are at the end). For Arcem a better alternative here: www.riscosports.co.uk/vfp/arcem.zip |
Matthew Phillips (473) 719 posts |
David, is James Aylett aware that you copied the message here, or are you feeding back things that are being suggested here? I’m still very much a Zap user. I expect I could migrate to StrongEd if I gave it a serious try, but you know how people are with favourite editors. It works pretty well on the Iyonix (very occasional crashes) and is usable on ARM v7, but does tend to crash rather more often on that platform. I very much appreciate its throwback facilities and the C and BASIC colouring modes. Could do with a PHP mode, though that’s really hard to do. It would also be nice to have PCRE support as I always have to look up the Zap syntax. The advantage of CVS over Git is that we do at least have a RISC OS CVS client! I think Theo was looking into porting Git at one point but ran into non-trivial issues. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8155 posts |
Maybe someone should check how it was done for StrongED Not a Zap user myself, but I do appreciate the “favourite” situation – at work some people don’t like NotePad++ and struggle by with multiple editors to do the same thing1 I do with one. 1 Sort of. Mostly people ask what scripts etc I have in the proverbial bag of tricks or just toss the problem my way. |
David Pitt (102) 743 posts |
James is aware that I copied the message here, and I passed on the URL So far nothing substantive has been forthcoming, there are only comments on the status-quo, but I have made James aware. |
Fred Graute (114) 645 posts |
Yes, but it is possible switch. I started with Zap, then used both in tandem for a while and finally switched to StrongED when its source became available.
StrongED has all of that too. :-) If there’s anything missing then you can always put in a feature request to make StrongED a bit more Zap-like. The Dump mode for example has, over the years, moved much closer to Zap’s binary modes. Another thing that could make a transition easier would be to create a new BaseMode that uses Zap style keyboard shortcuts. You wouldn’t be able to completely emulate Zap but it might help, and I already have a (very basic) version of such a mode.
I guess it would be the same with StrongED’s search syntax which is quite simple but also quite different from PCRE. If you have Stefan Bellon’s RegEx module loaded then you can use regular expressions but only for searching not S&R. Could do with a PHP mode, though that’s really hard to do There would be little point, StrongED modes are implemented very differently from Zap modes. Basically, it’s a text file vs a module. |
Rick Murray (539) 13806 posts |
Mmm, took another look at StrongEd. The C colouring is quite like Zap, but since StrongEd (normally) uses a standard bitmap font, it may be somewhat difficult to support bold and italics in a manner similar to ZapRedraw. Unfortunately, assembler mode is very primitive compared to Zap. This may be a difference in Zap being intended for nerds and StrongEd less so. Unfortunately I mess around in assembler dumps a fair bit, so… For instance:
And a few things I liked:
Looking through the menus and at the key bindings, it is clear that StrongEd is a powerful and capable editor with numerous features I haven’t yet discovered. ;-) However, I prefer Zap’s rendering (the italicised comments helps my brain simply skip over the content while looking at the code, and applying bold to things like variable type declarations (unsigned int) and stuff like “if” and “return” helps to make them stand out better. At the end of the day, when all is said and done, we can wrap things up by saying: MRC CP15, 0, R0, C0, C0, 0 If you know what that does (or can have an educated guess), then you want Zap. ☺ |
Rick Murray (539) 13806 posts |
Once you configure it correctly and add some useful extensions, NotePad++ is brilliant. Maybe those other people never moved beyond standard-issue Notepad? An interesting way of quickly looking at stuff is to drop an executable into a text editor. That’s how I found many of the embedded CGI routines in my IPCAM – I just looked at the list of strings in the executable. I used Zap, but Notepad++ would work too. Notepad normal? Would probably either choke or try to tell me that it’s really a file written in Chinese. And then choke. I used Metapad for a while, but now use Notepad++. |
Fred Graute (114) 645 posts |
Rick, you might want to have a look at the latest test release (StrongED 4.70a10) on the StrongED website
StrongED does provide the option to use font styles with bitmap fonts (but not system font and outline fonts). So you can have comments in italics or keywords in bold. In 4.70 support has been added for bitmaps of sizes other than 8×8 or 8×16, bitmap fonts can now be up to 32 pixels wide and of any height. Also, using StrongFont it’s very easy to convert Zap fonts to StrongED format.
The Dump mode in 4.70 has seen quite a bit of work.
Hmm, I think it’s fair to say that Dump mode wasn’t considered when IA search was written by Guttorm. IIRC IA search predates Dump mode.
Easily done by changing the key binding. :-)
There is an option to turn this on in the Edit section of Global Choices.
You can turn the flashing off, and change the colour. ;-)
This too has been addressed in 4.70, there now is a ‘Create file’ item in the iconbar menu. It has a submenu that provides access to the ‘Grab’ dialogue box. |
Rick Murray (539) 13806 posts |
Hmm… “Few things I liked”, item four. ;) |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8155 posts |
You might want to look at the files in StrongED.defaults.Modes and StrongED.defaults.global and twiddle a bit. Maybe create version of each mode that behaves more like you expect and offer it for others to use. That would be “Few things I liked”, item four and a bit :) |
Malcolm Hussain-Gambles (1596) 811 posts |
If you use a PC, sublime is awesome. |
Ron Briscoe (400) 78 posts |
Re: Sublime. Does it run on RISC OS? |
Ronald May (387) 407 posts |
Just a friendly reminder in case someone is recompiling !Zap, there is a bug in the taskwindow mode. |
Fred Graute (114) 645 posts |
With the help of your comments StrongED’s Dump mode has been improved further. Perhaps there are now a few more things for you to like’ :-)
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Rick Murray (539) 13806 posts |
You see, what this comes down to is finding the right kind of idiot who’d try weird things (that’s my role) to then tell the person who simply hadn’t encountered the problem (that’s your role). |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8155 posts |
Is that via the 4.70a10 link, or a yet to appear 4.70a11? Or perhaps a revised mode file to add to 4.70a10… |
Fred Graute (114) 645 posts |
Indeed, I wish there were more “idiots” trying StrongED as it’s proven quite useful. :-)
It will be in 4.70a11, although most of it works there are still a few minor niggles to sort out.
It’s all code changes in both StrongED and the AsmCompile utility. The only change in the Dump ModeFile is to rename the menu item ‘List SWIs’ to ‘List *Cmds & SWIs’ so it’s a bit clearer what it does. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8155 posts |
We wait for the 4.70a11 announcement then. BTW. On the subject of idiots working doing strange things, the TrapDelete module does a very nice job, especially with a tweaked Filer1 module such that “Del”2 is captured into the Transient directory heirarchy and “Shift-Del” instantly deletes in a permanent fashion. 1 Must get back to playing with those keyboard shortcuts… 2 Del for file delete seems more convenient to me than Ctrl-K, and sh-del is way easier than sh-ctrl-K |