Hi everyone,

It has been a while since I last sent an update, it's not that I
haven't been working on Uxn, on the contrary, it has been one of the
most productive of the summer. But I've been in a bit of a funk-

I remember a while back, I was toying with DawnOS, in one of the
folder of the disk image, there was this text file that read "Imagine
that software development becomes so complex and expensive that no
software is being written anymore, only apps designed in devtools."

I have a longer transcription of the DawnOS text file here:
https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/stack.html

Everywhere I turn, I see anarchistic and would-be emancipatory
technologies built solely for browsers, dedicated teams who chose to
build their forts directly in Apple or Google's backyard. I've been
trying to connect locally with computer clubs and university meetups,
but found nothing other than AI, VR and blockchain enthusiasts, enough
that I felt like my interests don't align much at all with the current
direction of things and perhaps I'm just behind the times a bit.

--

Well, in any case, I've been trying to untangle how I feel about it
all, meanwhile I've been teaching someone forth via Felix's amazing
UF.(I think you're reading this mailing list, so hey!)

UF5 has been quietly released a few days ago, and you should get it,
because it's awesome:
http://www.call-with-current-continuation.org/uf/uf.html

Someone commissioned me for a version of Orca uxn for their modular
synth setup which has only a black and white OLED screen, so as I
ported Orca to be legible on their little monitor, I thought that
perhaps it might be worth exploring for the ecosystem as a whole, so
I've updated uxnemu to toggle a black and white mode with F5.

After many iterations, instead of clamping the themes to the nearest
color, which doesn't work at all as it turns out.. I've simply made it
so colors 0 and 2 are black, colors 1 and 3 are white. This forces a
sort of standardization of the ordering of the theme, which had some
pretty interesting side-effects.

I've written about this here: https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/theme.html

I've been rewriting the Playdate emulator to reflect this, and I've
ported a handful of varvara roms to work on black and white screens. I
have yet to port the operating system and launcher.

So one other thing, I've had a few people asking about implementing
enums in uxntal, and there doesn't need to be any new syntax at all,
here's how enums in uxntal works:

|00 @suits &clubs $1 &diamonds $1 &hearts $1 &spades $1

This will create a label with children of values equal to their
offsets, if you're afraid of overlaps between different enums, choose
a different |padding. Don't forget to reset the program pointer after
declaring enums.

--

I'm not sure if you'd rather I keep this mailing list for bug fixes,
but I felt like writing, and I rather this be a sort of forum where we
can talk about all sorts of interesting personal computing adjacent
endeavors than just every which way someone manages to break uxnemu.
;)

That's all I think. Have a good one!

Dll

> Everywhere I turn, I see anarchistic and would-be emancipatory
> technologies built solely for browsers, dedicated teams who chose to
> build their forts directly in Apple or Google's backyard. I've been
> trying to connect locally with computer clubs and university meetups,
> but found nothing other than AI, VR and blockchain enthusiasts, enough
> that I felt like my interests don't align much at all with the current
> direction of things and perhaps I'm just behind the times a bit.

No, you're not - it's a feeling shared by quite a few, even if
less obviously visible. We have an overabundance of computing
resources coupled with a decline in true long-term research, so
everybody just slaps layer ontop of layer without addressing
fundamental problems. Perhaps we need a new engineering culture
of scarcity, forcing us to forget about superficial "features" 
and to drop supporting systems, protocols and tools that try to lock 
us into corporate "ecosystems" that in the end just consume resources, 
steal our data and restrict our freedom of thought.

> After many iterations, instead of clamping the themes to the nearest
> color, which doesn't work at all as it turns out.. I've simply made it
> so colors 0 and 2 are black, colors 1 and 3 are white. This forces a
> sort of standardization of the ordering of the theme, which had some
> pretty interesting side-effects.

That's a good idea - giving some "standard" interpretation to
the colors makes it easier to consolidate themes across different
application. I will adapt UF to follow this scheme.

> I'm not sure if you'd rather I keep this mailing list for bug fixes,
> but I felt like writing, and I rather this be a sort of forum where we
> can talk about all sorts of interesting personal computing adjacent
> endeavors than just every which way someone manages to break uxnemu.
> ;)

I like these sort of thoughts and the list isn't so busy that meta-talk
would drown anything of importance (yet).


felix

On Wed, 2022-09-28 at 10:50 -0700, Hundred Rabbits wrote:
> So one other thing, I've had a few people asking about implementing
> enums in uxntal, and there doesn't need to be any new syntax at all,
> here's how enums in uxntal works:
>
> > 00 @suits &clubs $1 &diamonds $1 &hearts $1 &spades $1
  ^
  Mwhuaahahaaa!
  Reply formatting changed the "| to "^ assuming it being
  a nested quote.
  ;-D

> This will create a label with children of values equal to their
> offsets, if you're afraid of overlaps between different enums, choose
> a different |padding. Don't forget to reset the program pointer after
> declaring enums.

Explaining the labels/symbols of devices mentioning ENUMs would make
everybody stumble early over ENUMs in TAL.


Stay ॐmmmmmmptimistic!

	y.