Hello to everyone interested in the future of Bol Processor!
I want to let all of you know that last week we began the next round of development for Bol Processor 2. The last update (2.9.6) revived the project and brought it to the world of Mac OS X users. While this was a significant step forward, we realized at the time that we were still one step behind Apple and Mac OS X development.
BP 2.9.6 is a Mac OS X-native application that runs natively on PowerPC Macs and under Rosetta on Intel Macs. That version of BP was also built using the commercial CodeWarrior development tools that were not available to most other interested developers and targeted Mac OS X 10.2. The current standard for Mac development is to create "Universal Binaries" that run natively on both PPC and Intel on 10.4 or 10.5 and that are built with Apple's XCode development tools (available for free to all OS X users).
So, I have upgraded one of my own computers to OS X 10.5 "Leopard" and have begun the process of converting BP2 to build with XCode. Once that is finished (probably later this week), then I will begin making changes and testing for Intel-compatibility using a Universal Binary version of BP2.
I will announce on this list when a working XCode project is available. Anyone else who is interested in trying to build and test BP2 is encouraged to give this a try! I will help you get the tools set-up if necessary. Other developers are invited to start contributing ideas and/or code as well.
BP2 users can help us at this stage by providing some feedback. With the current round of changes, it seems likely that we will have to stop supporting the "Classic" Mac OS (versions 7 to 9) in new versions of BP2. BP 2.9.6 also ran on OS X 10.2 or higher but 10.2 is about 6-7 years old now and the latest XCode versions do not directly support building software for 10.2. That does not mean it is impossible for us to continue supporting 10.2 but I would like to know whether we need to consider it. We may be able to take advantage of newer OS technologies and better user interface designs if we drop support for older versions of OS X.
So, which versions and architectures (PPC or Intel) of Mac OS do you want to be able to run BP2 on? What new features would you like to see?
Thanks, as always, for your interest and feedback concerning Bol Processor!
Anthony Kozar
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Supporting 10.2 is probably no longer a big issue. I do maintain a machine running this version in my office, but it is only for the sake of running the excellent PageSucker piece of software that stopped being upgraded. I also run MacOS 9 on an old G4 for silly reasons. ;-)
I agree with the principle of maintaining compatibility if it does not require too many code patches. Any version needs to be checked on the system it claims to support; for the time being we still can run the "CheckEverything" script on a 10.2 system, which is the minimum requirement to say that the BP2 program works.
I feel more concerned with compatibility with useful system enhancements such as St Clair's marvelous DefaultFolder. But I know that Anthony paid attention to it when upgrading the current version of BP2. More users might say something about the enhancements that they wish to see working flawlessly with BP2...
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Hello to everyone interested in the future of Bol Processor!
I want to let all of you know that last week we began the next round of development for Bol Processor 2. The last update (2.9.6) revived the project and brought it to the world of Mac OS X users. While this was a significant step forward, we realized at the time that we were still one step behind Apple and Mac OS X development.
BP 2.9.6 is a Mac OS X-native application that runs natively on PowerPC Macs and under Rosetta on Intel Macs. That version of BP was also built using the commercial CodeWarrior development tools that were not available to most other interested developers and targeted Mac OS X 10.2. The current standard for Mac development is to create "Universal Binaries" that run natively on both PPC and Intel on 10.4 or 10.5 and that are built with Apple's XCode development tools (available for free to all OS X users).
So, I have upgraded one of my own computers to OS X 10.5 "Leopard" and have begun the process of converting BP2 to build with XCode. Once that is finished (probably later this week), then I will begin making changes and testing for Intel-compatibility using a Universal Binary version of BP2.
I will announce on this list when a working XCode project is available. Anyone else who is interested in trying to build and test BP2 is encouraged to give this a try! I will help you get the tools set-up if necessary. Other developers are invited to start contributing ideas and/or code as well.
BP2 users can help us at this stage by providing some feedback. With the current round of changes, it seems likely that we will have to stop supporting the "Classic" Mac OS (versions 7 to 9) in new versions of BP2. BP 2.9.6 also ran on OS X 10.2 or higher but 10.2 is about 6-7 years old now and the latest XCode versions do not directly support building software for 10.2. That does not mean it is impossible for us to continue supporting 10.2 but I would like to know whether we need to consider it. We may be able to take advantage of newer OS technologies and better user interface designs if we drop support for older versions of OS X.
So, which versions and architectures (PPC or Intel) of Mac OS do you want to be able to run BP2 on? What new features would you like to see?
Thanks, as always, for your interest and feedback concerning Bol Processor!
Anthony Kozar
Supporting 10.2 is probably no longer a big issue. I do maintain a machine running this version in my office, but it is only for the sake of running the excellent PageSucker piece of software that stopped being upgraded. I also run MacOS 9 on an old G4 for silly reasons. ;-)
I agree with the principle of maintaining compatibility if it does not require too many code patches. Any version needs to be checked on the system it claims to support; for the time being we still can run the "CheckEverything" script on a 10.2 system, which is the minimum requirement to say that the BP2 program works.
I feel more concerned with compatibility with useful system enhancements such as St Clair's marvelous DefaultFolder. But I know that Anthony paid attention to it when upgrading the current version of BP2. More users might say something about the enhancements that they wish to see working flawlessly with BP2...