http://www.mso.anu.edu.au/~ralph/mac_stuff.html

My Mac Stuff

 

Since 1984 I have been programing macs of one type or another. I am usually developing an application that will help me with my current job as an astrophysicist, or I am trying ideas out for games. Over the years I have developed some programs that might actually prove useful or fun to other people. I present some of them here for people to download and try/use/trash. Most of the programs are freeware, and I like getting feedback from users with problems or comments.

As always I love feedback and bug reports.

Look for

Cheers!


Tools:

 

Graf 2.7.4 (225k)

Graf 2.7.4 PPC (303k)

Graf Examples (102k)

Graf is a 2D (for now) plotting program that can read just about any TEXT file and make a plot from it. It is an interpreter, and it reads through the text file line by line and looks for numbers. It simply ignores text that it doesn't understand. Graf uses a large text file editing engine so large data sets can be parsed, and it can have as many windows for plots or data as allowed by memory. Graf understands FORTRAN style 'd' notation for double precision output.

Graf also performs some simple statistics such as curve fitting and histograms etc. It is intended primarily for scientific plots. When it uses 'publish and subscribe' under system 7 or newer it can act as a plotter for Excel and so on.

This new version features an improved look and feel, better plotting (curves can go all the way to the plot edge for example) and probably new bugs. The new PowerMac Native versions are significantly faster than the older code, and remain file compatible.

Graf 2.7.4 is now available in normal or powerPC forms.

My TV!(54k)
My TV! is a substitute for the Apple Video Player for AV capable macs. It is friendlier for non-US video screen sizes. It has a full screen mode and settings for stop-motion and timelapse recoding.


Games:

Card Shell Vol 1 (328k)

The Card Shell Games Vol 1 the first of a series of solitaire card game I wrote in 1992/3. Volume 1 is the first four games to be developed with a new card game framework called the Card Shell. They all use full colour graphics including 40 pack designsand 60 background patterns. The games all share the same graphics file called 'cards' saving disk space.

Requires colour quickdraw and system 6.0.5 or newer.

 

Card Shell Vol 2 (279k)

The Card Shell Games Vol 2 the second of a series of solitaire card game I wrote in 1992/3. Volume 2 is a set of three more difficult games. They all use full colour graphics including 40 pack designsand 60 background patterns. The games all share the same graphics file called 'cards' saving disk space.

Requires colour quickdraw and system 6.0.5 or newer.

 

More card games to coming soon. After a break of 3 years and one failed foray into commercial production, the card shell games are back under development. Two new games are being tested now along with new graphics and alternative card packs.

Drag & Drop Utils

Here is a collection of drag and drop applications that I wrote and use on a daily basis. They are collectively known as the Rain Storm (because they are a bunch of droplets). The Rain Storm droplets are Freeware.

 

 

ClearRes(8k)

ClearRes is a drag and drop app that will zero the resource fork of any file dropped on it. This is a little bit dangerous, since most mac applications are made of resources! This means that you can drop Excel on ClearRes and it will be obliterated in a split second (yay!). On the otherhand it is actually useful when 'cleaning' a whole batch of documents that have, for example, preference information stored in their resource forks and you want to reset them all. If you don't know what a resource fork is then don't use ClearRes - it is meant as a programming /development tool.

 

Swapper(11k)

Swapper is a drag and drop app that will allow you to do very rapid seach and replace in files on a character by character basis. It is useful for changing strings of spaces to tabs or LFs to CRs for instance. It is orders of magnitude faster than using any wordprocessor and and it is even faster than BBEdit. Each processed file is saved under a new name so that if anything goes wrong ( i.e. out of memory) nothing is lost.

 

FAT cat(18k)

cat(9k)
cat is a drag and drop app that will join all the files dropped onto it into one big file. This makes most sense with TEXT files.

p2m FAT(23k)

 

 

p2m is a simple drag and drop app that will take any bunch of PICT files and convert them into into a Quicktime Movie. The movie setting can compression can be set. 8 Bit movies can have custom palettes. p2m requires Quicktime and System 7.0 or newer.

 

p2g(14k)

p2g is a drag and drop app that will take any bunch of PICT files and create GIF files with optimized colour tables. This includes 'line' based PICT files such as plots. It is small and fast. p2g requires Colour Quickdraw and System 7.0 or newer.

 

g2p(12k)

g2p is a drag and drop app that will take any bunch of GIF files and create PICT files. It is small and fast. g2p requires Colour Quickdraw and System 7.0 or newer.

 

 

 

f2p FAT (84k)

f2p is a more complex drag and drop app that will take any collection of astronomical FITS files GIF and create PICT files suitable for processing in graphics programs such as Photoshop. It is small and fast. f2p requires Colour Quickdraw and System 7.0 or newer.

 

r2p FAT(56k)

r2p is a simple drag and drop app that will take files in 'raw' 8 bits per pixel format, allow you to assign colour tables and create PICT files 'en masse'. r2p requires Colour Quickdraw and System 7.0 or newer.

 

r2m FAT(54k)

r2m is a like r2p, however instead of making a mass of PICT files the raw files are converted into a Quicktime Movie. This is useful for visualising multi-frame simualtion output for example. Requires Quicktime and System 7.0 or newer.

 


Development:

 

RS_Utils (23k)

Ultility Code (Pascal/THINK&CW;) is a collection of Pascal routines that I have developed/accumulated over the years and that I use in most of my projects. I am releasing them now to encourgage Pascal Programming! If you use any of this code then let me know.

 

Graf3D.p(5k)

 

 

Graf 3D 68K FIXMath and PPC double Pascal implementation This is an alpha version of a Pascal source code implementation of the original Graf 3D library from way back. The old Graf 3D that was only documented in MPW Appendix J used Fixed Math and worked on any mac. However I wanted to take advantage of my new PowerMac so I wrote a replacement with a nearly identical interface. It can be compiled as Fixmath based or as PPC based and I have successfully moved my old 3D applications over to native PPC code with only minimal changes. If you use any of this code then let me know.

 

Floating.p(8k)

 

Floating windows for procedural Pascal This is my version of a Pascal source code implementation of floating windows for procedural Pascal. It is based on code by others (noted in the source) but it is so useful, and fairly hard to find, that I thought I would put it up here for all to use. If you use any of this code then let me know.


Last Modified: Friday, 19-Oct-2001 12:23:05 AEST