It’s not that long since the previous news update, but there are a couple changes that are especially important:
Application bundle writable file system support
One problem with the app bundles was that by nature, their contents have read-only privileges to prevent unwanted modifications. However, as the emulator’s virtual filesystem needs to be able to not only create new files, but also modify existing ones (such as highscore saving in ZeroGravity and Continuum), using the files directory from inside the app bundle was not suitable.
To make the virtual file system writable, the emulator now relocates it to a safely writable location at /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/MACE/<application-name>/vfs. This has a couple of neat features:
On every launch, any original files which are either not present or zero-length are copied from the app bundle to the writable location. This includes the initial launch, during which the entire filesystem gets replicated there.
Holding down the “Shift” key performs a “soft-reset” of the writable filesystem, meaning that all originals files are replicated even if they exist already in the writable filesystem. This is handy in cases if the original system or application files get damaged and would cause the emulation to fail to start. NOTE: There is not yet any prompt when performing the “soft-reset”, but there is plan to add a confirmation dialog (including a option for “hard-reset” feature) later at some time.
Any files modified or saved by user are fully accessible through this folder in AppleDouble format, which can be exchanged between applications and/or other emulators (or with appropriate conversion, real Macs).
MacOS Catalina support tweaks
As the new macOS Catalina was released recently, it was discovered that there was a unnecessary privilege used by the SDL2: It was listening to background key presses solely to track state of the caps lock key. Luckily, there was already a patch for this issue in SDL 2.0.10, so updating the SDL2 library (and adjusting some caps lock support code) fixed this problem.
(Please note that there will still be warning for unsigned applications, as to remove this Apple requires not only signing, but since 10.15 also notarization of any downloaded MacOS applications, both which require the paid Apple Developer Program membership.)
New test application: Continuum 1.04
Thanks to the personal permission by Brian Wilson, in combination with the writable bundle support we added this weekend, we have now Continuum 1.04 available as a fully functional MACE app bundle (including planet editor):
Continuum in-game
The planet editor also works, and supports saving & loading of galaxy files
You can try the game out by visiting the downloads section. If you would like to know more about Continuum and its history, you can also visit the Continuum web page Brian Wilson has created here.
Other new test applications: Mac Concentration and GunShy 1.3
Thanks to the small fix done to the bug in SANE FP68K trap’s FMULD selector, Mac Concentration now works perfectly (it was previously stuck in game board generation loop due to the messed up multiplication results).
With the writable file system support, GunShy 1.3 is also finally feature-complete as a application bundle, as players need to be able to save & load games.
GunShy 1.3
Mac Concentration
Like Continuum, these two new app bundles are available freely for trying out in the downloads section.
Full list of changes since last post
2019-10-27 07:49:25 +0200 • Relocate VFS to writable path on Mac OS X startup
2019-10-27 04:52:17 +0200 • Update Alice, Continuum and GunShy JSON configs
2019-10-27 04:45:56 +0200 • Adjust CapsLock check to work with new SDL version
2019-10-27 04:44:03 +0200 • Update to SDL2.0.10 to remove scary Catalina popup
2019-10-27 04:21:42 +0200 • Tweak InvalRgn/InvalRect to work better in Conti..
2019-10-26 05:17:58 +0300 • Update cmake JSON config for MacConcentration
2019-10-26 04:25:41 +0300 • Adjust VBL routine call order for sound refresh
2019-10-26 03:50:40 +0300 • Fix FMULD bug (param1 not assigned correctly)
It’s been quite a while since last update, which is due to combination of us being busy real-life jobs, and focusing work on this project on a monolithic feature, which in this case is nothing less than getting the Standard File Package to work!
MS-BASIC “Save” dialog
THINK Pascal “Add Files” dialog
TeachText “Open” dialog
Features
This is list of the features which the M.A.C.E. Standard File Package emulation is currently capable of:
All 8 selectors for Pack3 (SFPutFile, SFGetFile, SFPPutFile, SFPGetFile, StandardPutFile, StandardGetFile, CustomPutFile, & CustomGetFile). The ones tested are highlighted, but others should work too.
Support for custom file dialogs (with assorted hacks to convert MFS-style dialogs, such as the “Save” dialog in MS-BASIC 2.00, to the new HFS-style format)
Supports both SFReply and StandardFileReply outputs
File listing using List Manager, which displays currently System 6-style SICNs, but with System 7.1+ style spacing (later expandable to use the real icons, when we get Desktop Manager interface)
Path popup menu, visually and functionally like on real System 7.x
Desktop folder support
Focus on selected items (including file list with highlight frame), alterable by mouse or tab key
Most of common SF key shortcuts: Clipboard shortcuts, Cmd+S (Save), Cmd+O (Open), Cmd+N (New folder), Cmd+D (Go to desktop), Cmd+Up (Go to parent), Cmd+Shift+Up (Go to root/desktop), Cmd+Down (Open folder), (Cmd+Left/Right to browse volumes not yet implemented)
Filename field input filtering (prevents “:” from being used in filenames, which is path separator). Also, copy-pasted filenames will be filtered with proper alert messages.
Not yet implemented: sfHookOpenAlias, sfHookGoToAliasTarget, sfHookGoToNextDrive, sfHookGoToPrevDrive, sfHookChangeSelection, sfHookSetActiveOffset
File type filtering supported, both by typeList and FileFilterProc
A GIF animation showing the progress done in the past month, from scratch to the latest version
Known issues
Although most of the Standard File Package is functional, and usable, there are still some issues left:
Because DirCreate is not yet implemented in NativeFS layer, FindFolder cannot create the Desktop Folder/Trash folders to the file system, thus at least Desktop Folder needs to exist to allow access to “Desktop” level in the SF dialogs. This also prevents “New folder” from actually creating the folders.
Eject button does not yet do anything, as the NativeFS volumes are non-ejectable
There are minor differences to real System 7.x style SF dialogs, for example with certain elements being a few pixels off their intended locations, and popup menu’s width not always expanding
Some custom dialogs don’t yet work exactly as they should, for example THINK Pascal 4.0 “Add files” dialog erases left edge of the applications own custom list located below the SF file list, and for some reason it allows attempts to add folders as source files…
Location of the SF dialog is sometimes not correct (for example, Railroad Tycoon’s “Save game” dialog is partially under the menu bar)
We cannot yet create app bundles for the currently working freeware/shareware applications that use StandardFile, because when sandboxed the bundle file system is read-only, and thus attempting to save anything to it would straight out fail. To work around this, we need to implement certain changes to the way file system in bundled applications is handled, but we are already working on that for the next release
Other improvements made for Standard File
There were a couple features that were implemented as part of Standard File Package implementation, some of which were necessary to make it work
NativeFS AVL tree balancing and iteration support
One important feature was the need for catalog iteration, which is used by Standard File dialogs to enumerate the files in current folder to be displayed in the file list. This allows for example GetCatInfo to use ioFDirIndex in the parameter block to index specific files inside given directory.
Also, this gave a good excuse to finally implement the actual AVL balancing algorithm in the NativeFS file system, which until now had behaved mostly as a dummy binary tree. Below is a screenshot of how the file system structure was changed by the balancing algorithm:
“Before” and “After” debug visualizations of the NativeFS binary tree data structure (click for larger view)
On the right-hand side, is the unbalanced “dummy” binary tree, and on left-hand side is the same file system, when using AVL balancing algorithm to do the insertions. The deepest nodes were reduced from, in this case, from way over 100+ key comparisons into a rough maximum of 10+.
Popup Menu Control
One important feature of the HFS-style Standard File dialogs is the navigation aid provided by the path popup menu. For this, the Popup Menu Control CDEF 63 was implemented. On real Macs, this was originally part of Communications Toolbox, before it was merged to the System 7.x at some point. The Standard File dialogs use only a subset of its features, but foundation for most use cases was built at the same time, so taking it into more common use should be quite easy. As it uses the Menu Manager’s PopUpMenuSelect trap call, the actual menu selection was already there.
One fun and tricky part though was the need to add MDEF “wrapper” for SF popup path menu, to ensure that the opened popup menu would never be narrower than width of the popup control. To do this, the control imitates how the real Macs did this by adding temporarily a MDEF “wrapper”, which injects modified menuWidth value to the menu after it receives a mSizeMsg message from the Menu Manager, thus modifying the resulting popup menu size.
Picture Button Control
The CDEF 61, picture button, was implemented just to allow adding the “New folder” button to the “put” dialogs. It is quite simple, at least in monochrome version, just drawing a PICT resource as content of a regular push button
Dialog Manager improvements
The StdFilter, which is also used by Standard File dialogs, was improved to add features used by it:
Outlining default button with FrameRoundRect
Handle “cancel” item’s shortcut key as escape/cmd+dot
Track cursor to turn it into i-beam over enabled textedit fields
Handle update events for default items
Also, the default shortcut keys (Cmd+X/C/V for Cut/Copy/Paste) were also implemented in DialogSelect trap.
Other news: 68020/68040 support
In other news, Pukka has also been busy adding 68020/68040 support, which includes:
M.A.C.E. 
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