I was hoping someone might be kind enough to take the time to explain my problem with orca/m and macgen to me. I’ve always used merlin for assembly; I purchased the orca languages years ago but never used orca/m really; i was more interested in orca/c for toolbox programming, never got very far.

Recently using merlin I was wishing I could step through the code so thought I would try orca/m and gsbug. I have orca/m 2.1.0 installed and started going through the orca/m manual not realizing it was written for v2.0 and so the hello.asm example in the manual produces no output under v2.1.0. I took me a while to figure that out. So being curious I installed v2.0 and v2.0..4 on a hd partition and v2.0 works as the manual states. v2.0.4 however does not.

So, the crux of it is, v2.0.4 (shell v2.0.3, macgen v2.0.2), macgen does not accept the input:

“macgen hello.asm hello.macros 13:orcainclude:m=“ but prompts for a filename. Entering “13:orcainclude:m=“ results in “:HD6:ORCA.2.0.4:LIBRARIES:orcainclude:m= could not be opened”. If I then enter “13:orcainclude:m16.orca” macgen processes that file, prompts for an outfile, then lists a bunch of unfound macros and prompts for a macro file name. If I then enter “13:orcainclude:m=“ macgen is very happy with that and completes and writes out hello.macros. Still won’t produce output if using the supplied sample hello.asm as it does not contain: “jsl SystemEnvironmentInit, jsl SysIOStartup or jsl SysIOShutdown” even though included release notes state they are minimum requirements for text IO.

Why does macgen 2.0.2 not accept the second two parameters in “macgen hello.asm hello.macros 13:orcainclude:m=“ and when it the prompts for a file name doesnt accept the wildcard = but does accept the wildcard after the second prompt.

It all doesn’t really matter, I’ll be trying to use v2.1.0 anyway but it bothers me it doesn’t work and I can’t figure out why.

Sorry to be so long winded. as an aside; am I mmissing documentation or was the 524 page manual I have and the release notes all that was ever released?

Tom Thumb,

> I was hoping someone might be kind enough to take the time to explain my problem with orca/m and macgen to me. I’ve always used merlin for assembly; I purchased the orca languages years ago but never used orca/m really; i was more interested in orca/c for toolbox programming, never got very far.
>
> Recently using merlin I was wishing I could step through the code so thought I would try orca/m and gsbug. I have orca/m 2.1.0 installed and started going through the orca/m manual not realizing it was written for v2.0 and so the hello.asm example in the manual produces no output under v2.1.0. I took me a while to figure that out. So being curious I installed v2.0 and v2.0.4 on a hd partition and v2.0 works as the manual states. v2.0.4 however does not.
>
> So, the crux of it is, v2.0.4 (shell v2.0.3, macgen v2.0.2), macgen does not accept the input:
>
> “macgen hello.asm hello.macros 13:orcainclude:m=“ but prompts for a filename. Entering “13:orcainclude:m=“ results in “:HD6:ORCA.2.0.4:LIBRARIES:orcainclude:m= could not be opened”. If I then enter “13:orcainclude:m16.orca” macgen processes that file, prompts for an outfile, then lists a bunch of unfound macros and prompts for a macro file name. If I then enter “13:orcainclude:m=“ macgen is very happy with that and completes and writes out hello.macros. Still won’t produce output if using the supplied sample hello.asm as it does not contain: “jsl SystemEnvironmentInit, jsl SysIOStartup or jsl SysIOShutdown” even though included release notes state they are minimum requirements for text IO.

If you are going to use the script repeatedly, you should also include your macros output file as one of the input files, so just double the name. You also seem to be missing the Prefix for the macgen folder:

17:macgen hello.asm hello.macros hello.macros 13:orcainclude:m=“
> Why does macgen 2.0.2 not accept the second two parameters in “macgen hello.asm hello.macros 13:orcainclude:m=“ and when it the prompts for a file name doesnt accept the wildcard = but does accept the wildcard after the second prompt.
>
> It all doesn’t really matter, I’ll be trying to use v2.1.0 anyway but it bothers me it doesn’t work and I can’t figure out why.
>
> Sorry to be so long winded. as an aside; am I mmissing documentation or was the 524 page manual I have and the release notes all that was ever released?

I use ORCA/M 2.10 heavily, and this is a typical script used to build a file with a resource fork. The two source files are Filename.src and Filename.rez, with the output being an app with the name Filename:

echo "Processing Files .. "
delete FileName
filetype FileName.src $b0 $0003
17/macgen +C FileName.src FileName.macros FileName.macros 13/Ainclude/mm16.=
assemble +W +E +T FileName.src keep=FileName
link +b FileName keep=FileName
filetype FileName.rez $b0 $0015
compile +w FileName.rez keep=resources rez=(-type $5e)
copy -r resources FileName
filetype FileName $b3 $db03
bye

Cheers - Ewen

On Monday, October 17, 2022 at 2:06:18 PM UTC-7, justliketom...@gmail.com wrote:
> “macgen hello.asm hello.macros 13:orcainclude:m=“ but prompts for a filename. Entering “13:orcainclude:m=“ results in “:HD6:ORCA.2.0.4:LIBRARIES:orcainclude:m= could not be opened”.

Sounds like the wildcard routine can't find anything, so the program acts like you didn't actually give it the final argument, and queries for a name. Curious that it would work if specified on stdin but not the command line..

IIRC, APW/Orca are different from something like UNIX, where the shell processes the wildcards and hands a full list of arguments to the program. APW/Orca hand the wildcard to the program and let it iterate through the possibilities itself. So if something changed in the way wildcards are processed, that could cause things to fail, but you'd expect it to cause most things to fail the same way.

If you "cat 13:orcainclude:m=", do you get a list of macro files from that directory?

Backing up a step: why can't you use GSBug with Merlin?

On Tuesday, October 18, 2022 at 2:56:11 AM UTC-4, Speccie wrote:
> Tom Thumb,

> I use ORCA/M 2.10 heavily, and this is a typical script used to build a file with a resource fork. The two source files are Filename.src and Filename.rez, with the output being an app with the name Filename:
>
> echo "Processing Files .. "
> delete FileName
> filetype FileName.src $b0 $0003
> 17/macgen +C FileName.src FileName.macros FileName.macros 13/Ainclude/mm16.=
> assemble +W +E +T FileName.src keep=FileName
> link +b FileName keep=FileName
> filetype FileName.rez $b0 $0015
> compile +w FileName.rez keep=resources rez=(-type $5e)
> copy -r resources FileName
> filetype FileName $b3 $db03
> bye
>
> Cheers - Ewen

Thank you for the response. This environment is quite new to me, I'll need to study that script.

On Tuesday, October 18, 2022 at 10:52:47 AM UTC-4, fadden wrote:
> On Monday, October 17, 2022 at 2:06:18 PM UTC-7, justliketom...@gmail.com wrote:
> > “macgen hello.asm hello.macros 13:orcainclude:m=“ but prompts for a filename. Entering “13:orcainclude:m=“ results in “:HD6:ORCA.2.0.4:LIBRARIES:orcainclude:m= could not be opened”.
> Sounds like the wildcard routine can't find anything, so the program acts like you didn't actually give it the final argument, and queries for a name. Curious that it would work if specified on stdin but not the command line.

I believe I'm entering the wildcard in both cases from the command line. It's just that Magen gets it the second time not the first

>
> IIRC, APW/Orca are different from something like UNIX, where the shell processes the wildcards and hands a full list of arguments to the program. APW/Orca hand the wildcard to the program and let it iterate through the possibilities itself. So if something changed in the way wildcards are processed, that could cause things to fail, but you'd expect it to cause most things to fail the same way.
>
> If you "cat 13:orcainclude:m=", do you get a list of macro files from that directory?

Yes, the four macro files are listed. For kicks I replaced Magen v2.0.2 with v2.0 and it all works as expected. <shrug>

>
> Backing up a step: why can't you use GSBug with Merlin?

I just found out last night I can. I didn't have the init version installed and not sure if I had the app installed completely. I just have to figure out how to use it. I can step through the code but haven't figured out how to exit gracefully yet. Some of the commands in my documentation don't seem to work, for example page 244 in my ORCA/M manual states there are three commands to exit the debugger. "Q" doesn't work for me, or I'm not entering it properly, "QR" doesn't work, "Unload does but leaves things in not so good a state. I've only just started with it so I need to work at it; I'm just not sure the documentation I have is valid in some instances.

Thank you for responding.

On Tuesday, October 18, 2022 at 12:33:53 PM UTC-4, Tom Thumb wrote:

> For kicks I replaced Magen v2.0.2 with v2.0 and it all works as expected. <shrug>

I take that back, it only seemed to work as the process of generating the macro file proceeded and Hello.macros is created but running Hello.asm results in about 620 errors :)

When using ORCA/M I'll be using v2.1.0 and let it go at that.

Strange behavior though.