Jestin wrote: ↑Fri Jan 27, 2023 2:50 pm
With something like that in place, I would see the need for a one-cilck installer to put new games into their proper place on the SD card. We could create two new BASIC commands; one to run the launcher, and one to run the installer that adds games to the launcher. The problem is, I don't know what you'd point that second command at. In order to work, the target file/directory would already have to be packaged on the SD card in some standard way. If that's true...why not just put it where the launcher can read it in the first place? Why use an installer at all?
This is a good point; we don't really need an installer, if people can figure out the basic steps of "put your files here." The installer was just a way to automate that procedure (and which people seem decidedly against. So I'm dropping that idea.)
We don't want the launcher to have to scan the file system every time; that would be an annoying wait. However, we could do a one-time scan with the F1 key or something.
For that, we'd still need a manifest. That might look like this (in PETSCII upper/graphics):
NAME:X16-EDIT
BY:STEFAN B JAKOBSSON
DESC:EDIT TEXT FILES AND PROGRAM SOURCE FILES
CATEGORY:PRODUCTIVITY
RUN:X16EDIT.PRG
README [[
The usual stuff you'd see in a readme file, abbreviated and converted to PETSCII upper/graphics text.
]]
I figure the launcher could also scan AUTOBOOT.X16 files contained in a subdirectory, then scan BASIC programs for the same metadata, contained in REM statements.
So the only thing we'd be asking developers to do is add this simple text file to their packages. We should always put some header text in our programs anyway, so this just gives us a common format that makes it easy to populate menu systems.