FBSL Question...

[AIR]

Hiya, Mike!

In the past, you mentioned that you were thinking about porting FBSL to the macOS platform.

Just wondering if you ever explored this....

AIR.

[Mike Lobanovsky]

Hi Armando, and season's greets to you too! It's nice to see you around.

Regarding the current interpretative FBSL BASIC version, it cannot be ported anywhere. I have strong doubts as to whether it can stand even as little as an attempt to change its compiler to anything other than GCC 4.3.3.

OTOH a new version of FBSL (whatever the name is that it's going to go by) is being redesigned from ground up to be 100% jitter-based w/ optional static compilation as well as 64-bit and multi-platform compatibility. I have rough sketches of console-/terminal-only solutions for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X (jitter only, no static compilation on this platform yet).

The new version should not be less feature-rich than the current v3.5. So, this is still leaving me at a loss with the GUI part of it. Like its predecessors, the new version is going to be a closed-source project and thus incompatible with your library and its prototype's licenses. Though I must admit your ClaroMac pill did bring me a few happy/trippy moments learning my way through the basics of windowed Linux and Mac OS X frameworks. And I am grateful for this, Armando.

I'm still waiting for the TCC team to complete their leisury transition from GPL to MIT and allow me to use their code freely and in full as the basis for my JIT engine implementation. The Windows part of it went MIT about two years ago but the other two major parts have remained GPL'ed until very recently, and it looks like the minor ARM part of it is going to stay GPL'ed still for a while longer.

I'm also not sure yet exactly what BASIC flavor the new version is going to support, in part or in full. There are a few options still open, you know.

[AIR]

Would something with an MIT license work for a GUI?

If so, you may want to look at LIBUI

It uses the "box" model, like most of the other alternative GUI toolkits available.  Still being fleshed out, but it has a number of components done and, unlike Claro, has a current and active code base.

Even though I've used "box" model toolkits in the past (like GTK,QT), I've never been able to fully reconcile that model under macOS.

At this point in the game, I'm just creating my own static toolkit for macOS/Cocoa (coded in Objective C, callable from C) that so far is linking and working with MBC, BACON, and NIM.  Not ready for release yet, though.

[Mike Lobanovsky]

MIT is perfect for my purposes. It only requires a formal attribution of the base sources to the original author in the accompanying documentation but allows me to modify them as I see fit for my purposes without my having to disclose my mods to anybody against my volition nor forbidding me to use them in full or in part in commercial environments if and when needed.

LIBUI looks promising in every respect except for the cryptic Objective-C notation in its Mac OS X section that I'm still finding quite difficult to grasp on the fly. The amount of controls it currently supports seems just about right for a starter GUI app like this new FBSL implementation.

Thank you very much for this very valuable lead, Armando!

[John]

I thought I would mention that there seems to be a serious effort getting IUP running native on Apple. Check out the Souceforge IUP mailing list archive for more info.