Personal Accounts

Hi folks,

A customer is asking about whether he can run Personal Accounts (the jr version of Prophet) on a modern ARM machine. I don’t have a copy here, but I’m fairly certain it is OK.
Certainly I’d expect it to work via Aemulor at a pinch, but I know Prophet actually ran/runs unmodified from personal experience.

Has anyone tried/uses Personal Accounts?

Thanks in advance!

I had a quick play with it on an ARMX6 and it seems to work OK

Many thanks Kevin :)

A customer is asking about whether he can run Personal Accounts (the jr version of Prophet) on a modern ARM machine. I don’t have a copy here, but I’m fairly certain it is OK. Certainly I’d expect it to work via Aemulor at a pinch, but I know Prophet actually ran/runs unmodified from personal experience.

It’s a long time since I tried it, but my recollection is that it had some “issues”. I can’t remember what, however.

Has anyone tried/uses Personal Accounts?

Over the years there has been a steady stream of people abandoning Personal Accounts in favour of CashBook due to claimed issues on RISC OS 5 systems from the Iyonix onwards. It was the number of people asking for help on the newsgroups because PA didn’t work properly on the Iyonix, coupled with the withdrawal of PA from the market, that led me to seek permission to release CashBook¹ at all. I can only assume that there are some issues with PA on modern hardware, therefore.

CashBook will import transaction data from Personal Accounts, and I’ve always been happy to advise on this if people need help.

CashBook also has the advantage of being open source, so that other people can keep copies of the source and build, bugfix or even develop it further. In its current incarnation, it gets tested on a Titanium system on a regular basis. :-)

¹ It was written as a way of learning to use C on the RISC OS desktop², and was one of several accounts packages that I’d written since the early 1990s (the others were in BASIC, and were even more terrible). It was broadly-speaking a look and feel clone of PA, which I was using at the time, but with some of the UI oddities and limitations removed. It was never written with the idea of it being released.

² And I’m still, nearly 20 years on, removing the “technical debt” from my lack of knowledge when work started… :-)

and it seems to work OK

Might be worth mentioning which version(s) have been tested as working? ;-)

Where might one get Personal Accounts from anyway? Elesar looks to be selling Prophet, but I can’t see anywhere offering Personal Accounts (other than CJE, because they have everything). Alternatively, is there a demo?

ran/runs unmodified from personal experience.

Written in (squished?) BASIC? If so, then it’ll be one of the small number of things that may well not be affected at all by the Big Changes since RISC OS 3.10. ;-)

Where might one get Personal Accounts from anyway? Elesar looks to be selling Prophet, but I can’t see anywhere offering Personal Accounts (other than CJE, because they have everything).

That’s pretty much your lot. APDL (and/or Proaction) were distributors, but as I noted above, it was their permission being withdrawn at around the time that people found it wobbling on modern systems that led to CashBook getting out into the wild.

Alternatively, is there a demo?

AU cover disc circa 1994, IIRC. :-)

Written in (squished?) BASIC?

Absolute-wrapped, squished BASIC, from what I recall.

It pushed the Wimp quite hard, though: the main window had several hundred writable icons in it to do the spreadsheet fields, which is why you couldn’t have more than 15 lines of data showing at a time. This ickyness, plus a few other hard-coded limitations, was what caused to me start musing about writing my own…

removing the “technical debt” from my lack of knowledge when work started…

One could say that “if it works, leave it alone”.

Everybody has various “quirks” in their code, things that need to be revisited and “fixed”, but I’m a believer in not fiddling with things for the sake of purity. If it does the job correctly, then let it be…

An example in my own code is the way I pick up the address of DADebug_WriteC. The function is declared as:

void (*DADWriteC) (char);

but I can’t for the life of my work out how to cast the result of _kernel_swi() into that. I’ve tried literally everything but the compiler says NO.

So I decided that I’d had quite enough of that nonsense and did this:

__asm
{
   SWI   (0x531C0), {}, {R0}, {R1-R3, LR, PSR}  // DADebug_GetWriteCAddress
   MOV   R1, &DADWriteC
   STR   R0, [R1]
}

So take that!

It works. It’s a lot less code than either _kernel_swi() (or, god help us, _swix()!) would amount to. So it works for me. :-)

Concentrate on adding functionality, don’t get hung up on old code. We all have to begin somewhere.

the main window had several hundred writable icons in it to do the spreadsheet fields

Wait… WHAT!?!?

Why not follow the example of, literally, the entire rest of the world. Plot the data into the window as is necessary, and if it needs to be modified, there’s a writeable thingy up top (usually in some sort of toolbar).
Making the entire window a big bunch of writeable icons… oh my God. I’m going to go lie down now…

One could say that “if it works, leave it alone”.

I’d agree, except that in CashBook’s case, it would make some new features a lot easier to implement if the five “spreadsheet” views didn’t have five copies of almost the same code behind them, whilst just one has the extra code necessary to allow things to be typed into it…

That, and it’s still technically pleasing to do it right. :-)

Steve – big thanks for the info that CashBook imports Personal Accounts files. I must admit, CashBook did cross my mind, but I assumed (BAD Andrew!) that it didn’t import data from other systems. Plus, the customer in question runs two programs (for years) – Organizer and Personal Accounts. He tried the Windows version and came back to the RISC OS one. I’m not entirely sure he’s willing to change at this stage.

However, it is good to know, and I shall certainly mention CashBook, and install it on his machine so it is there if/when he needs it.

Thanks again.

The version I have is 4.03 1st June 1998

One problem maybe is that the year is only 2 digits long as far as I can see and no way of extending it to 4

It works. It’s a lot less code than either _kernel_swi() (or, god help us, _swix()!) would amount to

static void (*debug_fn)(char);
_swix(0x531C0 /* DADebug_GetWriteCAddress */, _OUT(0), &debug_fn); /* debug_fn unchanged on _swix error */

seems simpler to me.

AIUI
Prophet: If the Absolute-wrapped is removed from pre Elesar versions it works on later CPUs until certain features are used (I personally never came across problems but I don’t use its invoicing, stock options and ?). This I believe is due to some assembler within the BASIC not being compatible with later CPUs (I think it was Iyonix o.k.)
There is also some copy protection but that can be got round.
I suspect the same may be true of Personal accounts although I believe it wasn’t written by Quentin.

seems simpler to me.

Yes, I’ve seen that. I think in DebugLib? I’m just reluctant to use a “simple” call that takes like a hundred instructions to implement its simplicity…

big thanks for the info that CashBook imports Personal Accounts files.

Just to be clear, it imports data, not files. The process is to export the transaction set from PA, then import that into CashBook and tidy things up.

I’m not entirely sure he’s willing to change at this stage.

That could be a show-stopper, then.