[Coco] How much did I know?

[Paul Fitch]

Good job Wayne.  I remember when I bought Version 1 and ran it, I had many
of the same thoughts.  Plus, it didn't work to well<g>.  I remember calling
you long distance to try to get it to work.  That's when Rodney and I got
involved.  Actually I voluntered to try to make it work better, and then
dragged Rodney into it, since he was way smarter<g>.  

I recently got a look at the Version 3 docs for DCOM, and I noticed that you
credited Rodney and I with helping you.  I appreciated that, and I'm sure
Rodney does too. I never actually saw the updated docs, since being on the
development team, I didn't have to buy version 3.  It was kinda cool seeing
my name in there, almost like one of the Big Boys of the Coco World.     

> -----Original Message-----
> From: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com 
> [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Wayne Campbell
> Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 8:38 PM
> To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> Subject: [Coco] How much did I know?
> 
> As I work at typing in the source to DCom 3.5, and 
> re-creating the source to DCom 3.1, I am faced with the 
> realization of just how little I knew back then. DCom is too 
> large, does everything the hard way, and never did realize my 
> ultimate goals for the program.
> 
> Before I got the original source code back, I started working 
> on a "new version", just to be able to successfully decode 
> the 3.1 version. I named the program "unpack", because I 
> finally realized that I should try to work with the terms the 
> original programmers of Basic09 used. Since procedures are 
> "packed" into I-Code modules, it makes sense that the reverse 
> would be "unpacking" the I-Code to retrieve the source code.
> 
> So far, unpack does everything DCom does, with the exceptions 
> that I haven't finished with the variable procedure yet (but 
> mostly done), have yet to deal with the line number 
> references and the called subroutine names, and the output is 
> not parsed to re-order the instructions into their final 
> form. Basically, it is DCom, DCP1, DCP2, and most of DCP3, 
> all in one program made up of 4 procedures. When it's done, 
> it may have 6 or 7 procedures. What there is so far loads and 
> runs *in* Basic09 with 20K of workspace memory. Compare that 
> with DCom, which has to be packed to even run, because the 
> parts are too large to fit into the workspace, even at 40K.
> 
> I was brand new to programming back then, and I was trying to 
> learn OS-9, Basic09 programming, programming in general, 
> *and* trying to decode I-Code, all at the same time. For what 
> it's worth, I think I accomplished alot, but that doesn't 
> make up for the fact that DCom is a kludge. It's actually 
> amazing to me that I was able to get DCom to work at all.
> 
> Because unpack is coming along so well, I am planning to 
> continue its development, and create the DCom I intended to 
> create to begin with. Unpack will be the workhorse that does 
> the work of decoding the I-Code. DCom, which will be called 
> DCom4, will be the user interface I wanted to create to begin 
> with. It will allow the user to rename variables, correct 
> errors in the TYPE statements, renumber line numbers, and 
> save the source file.
> 
> Generic labels are necessary, when you have no idea what the 
> variables were named in the original program, but they are 
> difficult to associate to the function of the code. Having to 
> load the reconstructed source into Basic09 and then rename 
> all the variables is, IMO, an unnecessary step. I always 
> wanted to be able to handle that as a function of DCom. Maybe 
> now I can make it so.
> 
> Wayne
> 
> 
> 
>       
> 
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