7 ms·

MacLua5.3: Classic MacOS port of Lua 5.3

131 points by arm 8y ago

pjmlp 8y ago
This looks quite interesting. Kudos for the porting effort.
favorited 8y ago
Lua is such a great language. I wish I had a chance to use it more often.
mntmn 8y ago
Very nice. With ShapeShifter, this will also run on classic Amigas.
- vhodges 8y ago
  And with Apollo Core it'll be fast too :)
tambourine_man 8y ago
I’m so glad there are people doing this kind of thing. I have a sweet spot for classic Mac OS, something about its simplicity hasn’t been match since, but I can’t imagine the motivation for doing this beyond pure fun.
- asveikau 8y ago
  Came here to say this. Lack of memory protection and preemption was atrocious. But the UI was dead simple and a joy. I also used to like to pick apart things in ResEdit.
  - usermac 8y ago
    Forgot all about ResEdit until I read your post. Too much fun.
  - mrweasel 8y ago
    Both Windows 3.11 and the classic MacOS would be great interface to clone in a Unix window manager or Wayland compositor. Sure they're old but so many of the concepts still hold up and honestly most of us don't need much more than that.
    - rvense 8y ago
      It's not just the interface, though. Note how "installing" stuff is just dragging files to the right locations. You could make fully bootable backups of your main drive just by copying everything from the root to a new drive. None of this re-installation rubbish or ownership getting messed up or what have you. It even worked across architectures, a Mac System 7.5 installation will boot on both 68k machines and supported PowerPC systems, just swap the drive over and you're going.
      - tambourine_man 8y ago
        Even better: you could create a RAM disk, copy system file and reboot from it at lighting speed. What I miss the most is the true spacial Finder. Copy a file to a floppy disk, add a custom icon and place it at a precise location on a window. Go to a different Mac and insert the drive. All those attributes are honored. Every single time no matter what. Such a simple and powerful model.
        classichasclass 8y ago
        And one window, one folder. That was a powerful yet subtle way of enforcing consistency.
        tambourine_man 8y ago
        Exactly
        Zelizz 8y ago
        Don't they still have that? Isn't that what the .DS_Store folders are for? I feel like I used to do that with USB drives to use on school computers.
  - tambourine_man 8y ago
    Spent so many hours in ResEdit. So much fun.
  - mistrial9 8y ago
    or.. Resourcerer !
  - kalleboo 8y ago
    I recently picked up my dream computer from 19 years ago - the PowerBook G3 (Bronze Keyboard) https://imgur.com/a/zhmi6cP https://imgur.com/a/zhmi6cP It's been great fun noodling around with, customizing the OS with Kaleidoscope schemes etc. Really love the classic MacOS. But it does bomb/hard freeze a lot. Especially with network activity (one AppleTalk glitch and the whole thing just freezes up) One of the main issues in actually using it is that the adoption of HTTPS and deprecation of old encryption methods has made all the browsers available (including Classzilla) completely useless. My solution has been to install Firefox in a VM on my NAS and connect to that through VNC or an X11 client (former is zippier, but the latter makes it feel more native)
mitchtbaum 8y ago
When I think about programming on Mac in a language like Lua, I think about Apple Automator and another visual programming environment for mostly digital audio synthesis which I can't remember, but it starts with an 'S' afair. (it's very graphics intensive) This Lua Logic Editor presentation has a lot more info: https://www.lua.org/wshop13/Gladysh.pdf https://www.lua.org/wshop13/Gladysh.pdf
- jpfed 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperCollider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperCollider ?
  - mitchtbaum 8y ago
    No. That one is strictly audio and is cross-platform. The one I'm thinking of has some closer connection to Automator... now I remember! It's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_Composer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_Composer Wonder how the S wire got crossed with it.. :)
- jamesfmilne 8y ago
  Max started out on MacOS, now owned by Cycling 74: https://cycling74.com/ https://cycling74.com/ PureData is an open-source package inspired by Max: https://puredata.info/ https://puredata.info/
ww520 8y ago
That's excellent news. I wish the MacOS has more open source porting support, like making Wine work on 64-bit MacOS.
- classichasclass 8y ago
  This is classic MacOS (pre-OS X "macOS"). Porting to it is a rather different kettle of fish. Things like SIOW and SIOUX helped but tools ported in that fashion were never first class citizens in the classic Mac ecosystem because there's no native CLI or underlying Un*xy layer. At least this one chains up to MPW, which is a nice little feature.
zevv 8y ago
Here is Lua being compiled on Turbo C 1.0 (1990): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jvLY5pUwic It is truly amazing how the authors have put so much effort in keeping Lua so portable - about the only dependency for running Lua on any device is having a C compiler and a bit of memory.
- TickleSteve 8y ago
  (actually Turbo C++ 1.0) Having said that, it would probably also build fine on Turbo C also.
- classichasclass 8y ago
  There was Plua for PalmOS as well. I still use that for a Palm-powered remote light control. It even had GUI construction primitives built-in and could be "cross compiled" (disclaimer: I maintained the Mac OS X port).
mrpippy 8y ago
It would be fun to do a similar port of an embeddable JS engine like Duktape (https://duktape.org https://duktape.org) also
RodgerTheGreat 8y ago
Any chance of an hqx-ed up binary release? I'd love to give this a spin on my Powerbook 180.
- kalleboo 8y ago
  There's one under Releases https://github.com/SolraBizna/MacLua5.3/releases https://github.com/SolraBizna/MacLua5.3/releases Just tried it on my PowerBook G3, runs beautifully: https://i.imgur.com/y0cI15O.jpg https://i.imgur.com/y0cI15O.jpg Now I just gotta learn Lua...
  - arm 8y ago
    Oh wow, I love how you have Mac OS skinned in that screenshot! Mind sharing what you did to get it looking like that?
    - kalleboo 8y ago
      Using this classic piece of software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleidoscope_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleidoscope_(software) This account tweets random schemes for an idea of how they can look: https://twitter.com/kaleidoscopemac https://twitter.com/kaleidoscopemac

131 points by arm 8y ago

pjmlp 8y ago

This looks quite interesting. Kudos for the porting effort.

favorited 8y ago

Lua is such a great language. I wish I had a chance to use it more often.

mntmn 8y ago

Very nice. With ShapeShifter, this will also run on classic Amigas.

vhodges 8y ago
And with Apollo Core it'll be fast too :)

tambourine_man 8y ago

I’m so glad there are people doing this kind of thing. I have a sweet spot for classic Mac OS, something about its simplicity hasn’t been match since, but I can’t imagine the motivation for doing this beyond pure fun.

asveikau 8y ago
Came here to say this. Lack of memory protection and preemption was atrocious. But the UI was dead simple and a joy. I also used to like to pick apart things in ResEdit.
- usermac 8y ago
  Forgot all about ResEdit until I read your post. Too much fun.
- mrweasel 8y ago
  Both Windows 3.11 and the classic MacOS would be great interface to clone in a Unix window manager or Wayland compositor. Sure they're old but so many of the concepts still hold up and honestly most of us don't need much more than that.
  - rvense 8y ago
    It's not just the interface, though. Note how "installing" stuff is just dragging files to the right locations. You could make fully bootable backups of your main drive just by copying everything from the root to a new drive. None of this re-installation rubbish or ownership getting messed up or what have you. It even worked across architectures, a Mac System 7.5 installation will boot on both 68k machines and supported PowerPC systems, just swap the drive over and you're going.
    - tambourine_man 8y ago
      Even better: you could create a RAM disk, copy system file and reboot from it at lighting speed. What I miss the most is the true spacial Finder. Copy a file to a floppy disk, add a custom icon and place it at a precise location on a window. Go to a different Mac and insert the drive. All those attributes are honored. Every single time no matter what. Such a simple and powerful model.
      - classichasclass 8y ago
        And one window, one folder. That was a powerful yet subtle way of enforcing consistency.
        tambourine_man 8y ago
        Exactly
      - Zelizz 8y ago
        Don't they still have that? Isn't that what the .DS_Store folders are for? I feel like I used to do that with USB drives to use on school computers.
- tambourine_man 8y ago
  Spent so many hours in ResEdit. So much fun.
- mistrial9 8y ago
  or.. Resourcerer !
- kalleboo 8y ago
  I recently picked up my dream computer from 19 years ago - the PowerBook G3 (Bronze Keyboard) https://imgur.com/a/zhmi6cP https://imgur.com/a/zhmi6cP It's been great fun noodling around with, customizing the OS with Kaleidoscope schemes etc. Really love the classic MacOS. But it does bomb/hard freeze a lot. Especially with network activity (one AppleTalk glitch and the whole thing just freezes up) One of the main issues in actually using it is that the adoption of HTTPS and deprecation of old encryption methods has made all the browsers available (including Classzilla) completely useless. My solution has been to install Firefox in a VM on my NAS and connect to that through VNC or an X11 client (former is zippier, but the latter makes it feel more native)

mitchtbaum 8y ago

When I think about programming on Mac in a language like Lua, I think about Apple Automator and another visual programming environment for mostly digital audio synthesis which I can't remember, but it starts with an 'S' afair. (it's very graphics intensive) This Lua Logic Editor presentation has a lot more info: https://www.lua.org/wshop13/Gladysh.pdf https://www.lua.org/wshop13/Gladysh.pdf

jpfed 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperCollider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperCollider ?
- mitchtbaum 8y ago
  No. That one is strictly audio and is cross-platform. The one I'm thinking of has some closer connection to Automator... now I remember! It's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_Composer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_Composer Wonder how the S wire got crossed with it.. :)
jamesfmilne 8y ago
Max started out on MacOS, now owned by Cycling 74: https://cycling74.com/ https://cycling74.com/ PureData is an open-source package inspired by Max: https://puredata.info/ https://puredata.info/

ww520 8y ago

That's excellent news. I wish the MacOS has more open source porting support, like making Wine work on 64-bit MacOS.

classichasclass 8y ago
This is classic MacOS (pre-OS X "macOS"). Porting to it is a rather different kettle of fish. Things like SIOW and SIOUX helped but tools ported in that fashion were never first class citizens in the classic Mac ecosystem because there's no native CLI or underlying Un*xy layer. At least this one chains up to MPW, which is a nice little feature.

zevv 8y ago

Here is Lua being compiled on Turbo C 1.0 (1990): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jvLY5pUwic It is truly amazing how the authors have put so much effort in keeping Lua so portable - about the only dependency for running Lua on any device is having a C compiler and a bit of memory.

TickleSteve 8y ago
(actually Turbo C++ 1.0) Having said that, it would probably also build fine on Turbo C also.
classichasclass 8y ago
There was Plua for PalmOS as well. I still use that for a Palm-powered remote light control. It even had GUI construction primitives built-in and could be "cross compiled" (disclaimer: I maintained the Mac OS X port).

mrpippy 8y ago

It would be fun to do a similar port of an embeddable JS engine like Duktape (https://duktape.org https://duktape.org) also

RodgerTheGreat 8y ago

Any chance of an hqx-ed up binary release? I'd love to give this a spin on my Powerbook 180.

kalleboo 8y ago
There's one under Releases https://github.com/SolraBizna/MacLua5.3/releases https://github.com/SolraBizna/MacLua5.3/releases Just tried it on my PowerBook G3, runs beautifully: https://i.imgur.com/y0cI15O.jpg https://i.imgur.com/y0cI15O.jpg Now I just gotta learn Lua...
- arm 8y ago
  Oh wow, I love how you have Mac OS skinned in that screenshot! Mind sharing what you did to get it looking like that?
  - kalleboo 8y ago
    Using this classic piece of software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleidoscope_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleidoscope_(software) This account tweets random schemes for an idea of how they can look: https://twitter.com/kaleidoscopemac https://twitter.com/kaleidoscopemac