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Building a new Windows 3.1 app in 2019: A Slack Client

yeokhengmeng.com

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Re: Building a new Windows 3.1 app in 2019: A Slack Client

#111

Post by zoom6628 »

gattilorenz wrote: post #98
j88439h84 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's Beeware. https://beeware.org/ > Write your apps in Python and release them on iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS, Linux, Web, and tvOS using rich, native user interfaces. Multiple apps, one codebase, with a fully native user experience on every platform.

This sounds great, but it seems there's no out-of-the-box support for a rich text textbox? I have a python script that I want to deploy as self-contained app for windows and osx with a gui. Finding a framework that works, is decent to use, doesn't need hundreds of MBs of dependencies, and has rich text support is...not easy.

Have a look at nuitka for compiling your script to a binary.

Re: Building a new Windows 3.1 app in 2019: A Slack Client

#112

Post by pjc50 »

loa_in_ wrote: post #96
yeokm1 wrote: post #2

I built a Win 3.1 app during a company hackathon just for fun. Here, I detail learnings and process for how a new old app can be created with the aid of modern tools and hindsight of old technologies. And perhaps what lessons can it offer us today. Without the benefit of modern libraries and languages, I had to read up and take care of many low level details, socket programming, HTTP, JSON parsing, UI design in code…

Did you get to work with a co-operative task scheduling? This version of Windows still used one I think. What's your experience if so?

You'd only notice if it an app crashed, at which point your only option would be to hard-reset the whole system losing all unsaved state.

Re: Building a new Windows 3.1 app in 2019: A Slack Client

#113

Post by jsjohnst »

keithnz wrote: post #20
yeokm1 wrote: post #2

I built a Win 3.1 app during a company hackathon just for fun. Here, I detail learnings and process for how a new old app can be created with the aid of modern tools and hindsight of old technologies. And perhaps what lessons can it offer us today. Without the benefit of modern libraries and languages, I had to read up and take care of many low level details, socket programming, HTTP, JSON parsing, UI design in code…

bet you had fancy pants autocomplete also! That was a game changer when it came along....otherwise you had to refer to docs/books.... not to mention the limited screen size.... two monitors? no one was that rich :)

> not to mention the limited screen size.... two monitors? no one was that rich :)

I had dual screens at home in late 1995 for sure, can’t remember if I used a dual screen setup any earlier than that.

Re: Building a new Windows 3.1 app in 2019: A Slack Client

#115

Post by Multicomp »

EliRivers wrote: post #106

Petzold is Gold. I have a copy of the Fifth Edition that I bought new and I expect it to remain useful for some time yet.

Fwiw programming windows by Petzold through the 5th edition covers native Windows development through Windows XP.

The sixth edition on words begins to use the. Net CLR and other non-native toolchains as Microsoft changed them. So, those are less valuable to me.

If you want to do native Windows development, that is probably the single best book you could buy.

Re: Building a new Windows 3.1 app in 2019: A Slack Client

#116

Post by jdance »

eb0la wrote: post #24
yeokm1 wrote: post #2

I built a Win 3.1 app during a company hackathon just for fun. Here, I detail learnings and process for how a new old app can be created with the aid of modern tools and hindsight of old technologies. And perhaps what lessons can it offer us today. Without the benefit of modern libraries and languages, I had to read up and take care of many low level details, socket programming, HTTP, JSON parsing, UI design in code…

I expected to be compiled in some kind of VM, not on an actual computer with Windows 3.11 :-). I feel "old-style" documentation is much better than we have now. My most productive _python_ only work times were when I had only the python .hlp file and a _physical_ paper book. What are your impressions?

I work like this every day in my game that I am building. I’m almost the only one using the engine, and 90% of my work is in lua. I use the source code and the lua 5.1 reference for everything.

I hardly google something in a week of work, since there is nothing online about anything. It is like heaven compared to other ”google driven” programming things I have done. I feel very productive pretty much all the time, even when debugging mysterious real time issues.

Re: Building a new Windows 3.1 app in 2019: A Slack Client

#117

Post by jdance »

jdance wrote: post #116
eb0la wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expected to be compiled in some kind of VM, not on an actual computer with Windows 3.11 :-). I feel "old-style" documentation is much better than we have now. My most productive _python_ only work times were when I had only the python .hlp file and a _physical_ paper book. What are your impressions?

I work like this every day in my game that I am building. I’m almost the only one using the engine, and 90% of my work is in lua. I use the source code and the lua 5.1 reference for everything. I hardly google something in a week of work, since there is nothing online about anything. It is like heaven compared to other ”google driven” programming things I have done. I feel very productive pretty much all the time, ev…

In fact, sometimes I work with wifi off just because it creates a special peace of mind — and then I have to turn it on to do git push :)

Re: Building a new Windows 3.1 app in 2019: A Slack Client

#118

Post by scarface74 »

rvanmil wrote: post #45
userbinator wrote: post #42

Notice the binary size of the app is only 64KiB. In the demoscene this would be a disqualification as it's 676 bytes over the limit, but in this case I'll overlook it because of the sheer awesomeness of what you've done (and I'm sure trimming off 676 bytes wouldn't be too difficult ;-) More seriously, this is an excellent proof-of-concept that a Slack client does not need to use hundreds of MB of RAM and consume most…

> More seriously, this is an excellent proof-of-concept that a Slack client does not need to use hundreds of MB of RAM and consume most of a modern CPU core to provide its basic functionality. If you’re so sure that this is possible, then where is the Electron competitor which allows us to build cross platform applications like this, with the same levels of productivity and a consistent and decent user interface? No…

Yes, because Slack is one man shop that can’t afford to hire one or two Windows, Mac, and Linux developers.

Re: Building a new Windows 3.1 app in 2019: A Slack Client

#119

Post by tinus_hn »

yeokm1 wrote: post #87
AdrianB1 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no direct correlation between the size of an executable (64kb) and the size of the RAM usage (can be hundreds of MB). I could not find any information about the total memory usage of the application, is it described anywhere?

Win 3.1 apps can also access memory in 64K segments which I only use 1 to hold the humongous HTTP+JSON reply from Slack. Wikipedia says "However, no single process can use more than 16 MB.". Not sure where is the source of that though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.1x

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_mode

It’s a limitation from the 286 Protected Mode.

Re: Building a new Windows 3.1 app in 2019: A Slack Client

#120

Post by [deleted] »

amluto wrote: post #75

You can probably run this app using WINE on any modern Linux 64-bit system. Or maybe even Mac OS X Catalina. (The Linux x86 maintainers are semi-seriously considering deprecating the horrible machinations needed for 16-bit on 32-bit to work, but 16-bit on 64-bit Will be supported for the foreseeable future.)

[deleted]
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