"There are only a few comments in the version 1.0 source code, most of which are associated with assembly language snippets. That said, the lack of comments is simply not an issue. This code is so literate, so easy to read, that comments might even have gotten in the way."
I'm looking at the code and just cannot agree. If I look at a command like "TRotateFloatCommand.DoIt" in URotate.p, it's 200 lines long without a single comment. I look at a section like this and there's nothing literate about it. I have no idea what it's doing or why at a glance:
pt.h := BSR (r.left + ORD4 (r.right), 1);
pt.v := BSR (r.top + ORD4 (r.bottom), 1);
pt.h := pt.h - BSR (width, 1);
pt.v := pt.v - BSR (height, 1);
pt.h := Max (0, Min (pt.h, fDoc.fCols - width));
pt.v := Max (0, Min (pt.v, fDoc.fRows - height));
IF width > fDoc.fCols THEN
pt.h := pt.h - BSR (width - fDoc.fCols - 1, 1);
IF height > fDoc.fRows THEN
pt.v := pt.v - BSR (height - fDoc.fRows - 1, 1);
Just breaking up the function with comments delineating its four main sections and what they do would be a start. As would simple things like commenting e.g. what purpose 'pt' serves -- the code block above is where it is first defined, but you can't guess what its purpose is until later when it's finally used.
Good code does not make comments unnecessary or redundant or harmful. This is a myth that needs to die. Comments help you understand code much faster, understand the purpose of variables before they get used, and understand the purpose of functions and parameters when their short names cannot possibly communicate those things in sufficient detail.
When this got released I really expected someone in the opensource community to run with it, but as far as I know no one has. Back around 1990 a Graphic designer that had his office n the same building as my mom worked in let me copy his Photoshop 1.x disks and nothing has ever compared to it for me. When will we get the linux port of Photoshop 1.0? I would love to see how it develops.
> 2. Restrictions. Except as expressly specified in this Agreement, you may not: (a) transfer, sublicense, lease, lend, rent or otherwise distribute the Software or Derivative Works to any third party; or (b) make the functionality of the Software or Derivative Works available to multiple users through any means, including, but not limited to, by uploading the Software to a network or file-sharing service or through any hosting, application services provider, service bureau, software-as-a-service (SaaS) or any other type of services. You acknowledge and agree that portions of the Software, including, but not limited to, the source code and the specific design and structure of individual modules or programs, constitute or contain trade secrets of Museum and its licensors.
I was talking about more than just a literal port, running with it is broader than just a literal port. I guess my general point is that I am disappointed that all these releases of historical code have so little to show for being released.
Edit: Disappointed is really not the right word but I am failing at finding the right word.
1) these historical source code releases really are largely historical interest only. The original programs had constraints of memory and cpu speed that no modern use case does; the set of use cases for any particular task today is very different; what users expect and will tolerate in UI has shifted; available programming languages and tooling today are much better than the pragmatic options of decades past. If you were trying to build a Unix clone today there is no way you would want to start with the historical release of sixth edition. Even xv6 is only "inspired by" it, and gets away with that because of its teaching focus. Similarly if you wanted to build some kind of "streamlined lightweight photoshop-alike" then starting from scratch would be more sensible than starting with somebody else's legacy codebase.
2) In this specific case the licence agreement explicitly forbids basically any kind of "running with it" -- you cannot distribute any derivative work. So it's not surprising that nobody has done that.
I think Doom and similar old games are one of the few counterexamples, where people find value in being able to run the specific artefact on new platforms.
No, it’s source available but not open source. Open source requires at minimum the license to distribute modified copies. Popular open source licenses such as MIT [1] take this further:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
This makes the license transitive so that derived works are also MIT licensed.
Not quite. You need to include the MIT license text when distributing the software*, but the software you build doesn't need to also be MIT.
*: which unfortunately most users of MIT libraries do not follow as I often have an extremely difficult time finding the OSS licenses in their software distributions
MIT is not copyleft. The copyright notice must be included for those incorporated elements, but other downstream code it remains part of can be licensed however it wants.
AGPL and GPL are, on the other hand, as you describe.
* If a country doesn't have "closed borders" then many foreigners can visit if they follow certain rules around visas, purpose, and length of stay. If instead anyone can enter and live there with minimal restrictions we say it has "open borders".
* If a journal isn't "closed access" it is free to read. If you additionally have permissions to redistribute, reuse, etc then it's "open access".
* If an organization doesn't practice "closed meetings" then outsiders can attend meetings to observe. If it additionally provides advance notice, allows public attendance without permission, and records or publishes minutes, then it has “open meetings.”
* A club that doesn't have "closed membership" is open to admitting members. Anyone can join provided they meet relevant criteria (if any) then it's "open membership".
I understand it was a very unique and powerful piece of software in 1990 but why would it be such a game changer to have the 1.0 running on Linux today?
You could try having an LLM port it to Linux :) As an aside I was always (well, no longer) hoping that Photoshop gets ported to Linux because at least an IRIX port existed, so there has to be some source code with X11 or whatever library code.
That software box on the shelf at Babbage’s is a cherished memory—a tangible oddity of software distribution prior to broadband, now just a relic in memory. Most of us assumed it would last forever. We get our software at the click of a button now, but we traded something for that.
Software felt more valuable when you forked over £60+ ( Which was worth a lot more back then ) and got a physical box, with a chunky set of instruction manuals and 5+ floppy disks.
It wasn't even broadband that destroyed that experience, when CDs came around developers realised they had space to just stick a PDF version of the manual on the CD itself and put in a slip that tells you to stick in the CD, run autorun.exe if it didn't already, and refer to the manual on the CD for the rest!
There are many things I feel nostalgic for in that era, but chunky manuals for specific software are at the bottom of that list.
They weren’t like textbooks, which have knowledge that tends to be relevant for decades. You’d get a new set with every software release, making the last 5-20 lbs of manuals obsolete.
You did lose some of the readability of an actual book. Hard-copy manuals were better for that. But for most software manuals, I did more “look up how to do this thing” than reading straight through. And with a pdf on a CD you had much better search capabilities. Before that you’d have to rely on the ToC, the book index and your own notes. For many manuals, the index wasn’t great. Full text search was a definite step up.
Even the good ones, like the 1980s IBM 2-ring binder manuals, which had good indexes, were a pain to deal with and couldn’t functionally match a PDF or text file on a CD for searchability.
Also, you were far more likely to get actual documentation back in the day. You're never going to get a detailed first-party technical reference for today's Apple computers (at least not without being Big Enough and signing a mountain of NDAs); compare that to the Apple II having a full listing of the Monitor ROM, or the original IBM PC Technical Reference Manual.
The very existence of those manuals improved the software, as the technical writers were trained in a different discipline than programming, and it really showed.
Even some well-documented modern software is obviously documented by the programmers and programmer-adjacent.
Manuals like AutoCADs have certainly felt valuable https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/Gm8AAeSwwIZowjzn/s-l1600.jpg It's not even complete, for instance the ADS manual is missing. It's also a bit more expensive with roughly 3700 USD in 1992.
As I remember, the blue ones where the most ordinary (and boring), at least for 3½-inch size. For 5¼-inch, they were mostly black, but I remember some of them in colors too (especially orange or yellow ones, they were beautiful).
> "Software architect Grady Booch is the Chief Scientist for Software Engineering at IBM Research Almaden and a trustee of the Computer History Museum. He offers the following observations about the Photoshop source code."
OMG. Booch?? The father of UML is still around? Given that UML is a true crime against humanity, it just goes to show there is no justice in the world. (I want a lifespan refund for the amount of time I spent learning UML and Design Patterns back in the bad old Enterprise Java days. Oof)
It was going to be the future of Software Engineering in the 2000s, Software Architects laying out boxes for Software Bricklayers to implement as dictated, code generation tools were going to make programming trivial.
For trivial CRUD apps, and maintaining modified versions of the generated code was a nightmare.
>To download the code you must agree to the terms of the license, which permits only non-commercial use and does not give you the right to license it to third parties by posting copies elsewhere on the web.
Note this is a toxic license. Accepting it and/or reading of the code has potential for legal liability.
Still, applaud releasing the source code, even if encumbered. Preservation is most important, and any legal teeth will eventually expire with the copyright.
I used to use GIMP as an example of OSS desktop applications having bad UX, I mean back around 2010 maybe. The UX felt plain horrible. Anything I every tried there was pain to achieve. And there was plethora of desktop applications having the same issue back then. "Geeks can't do UI".
I feel like that has changed? Even Blender felt good the last time I used it, Firefox became kinda fine, though these are probably bad examples as they are both mainstream software. But what about OSS that is used primarily by OSS enthusiasts? What about GIMP now?
This is just my personal experience, but even with the current UI, there can tend to be a learning curve with GIMP. Alot of it probably comes from figuring out where tools and functionality that are readily available upfront in other paint programs are hidden 2-3 menus deep in GIMP
That’s what happens when you let people do other people's jobs. UI/UX design is a profession, and there is a reason for that.
Unfortunately, designers are rare among the FOSS community. You can't attract real casual or professional users if you don't recognize the value of professional UI/UX.
Blender feels like an outlier amongst open source software. Outside of programmers tools the great majority of open source feels mediocre. I wonder what the Blender people did differently.
A simple trick to make GIMP perfectly usable (exists since ages):
> To change GIMP to single-window mode (merging panels into one window), go to "Windows" in the top menu and select or check "Single-Window Mode"; this merges all elements like the Toolbox, Layers, and History into one unified view.
For texting I recommend using a mobile phone or desktop instant messaging program. While it's not the case with all of them, graphics editing tools tend to have texting utilities as a second-class citizen at best
Its just the first two results from top of Google.
Maybe the tool was improved in version 3.0, I'm running an older 2.x version. I will check it next time.
The versions were difficult in:
- font size applying
- random loss / reset settings
- there were some issues with the preview when editting
- font preview before selection
etc.
Both of those are from over a year ago? For future, I wouldn't think that's "top" of any discussion.
The strange font sizes and setting reset was mostly fixed as part of the 2020 massive refactor [0]. There are still some minor inconsistencies between the two font editor panels, but they're being worked on.
Thankfully, you shouldn't have any random setting changes since about 2018 build.
"There are only a few comments in the version 1.0 source code, most of which are associated with assembly language snippets. That said, the lack of comments is simply not an issue. This code is so literate, so easy to read, that comments might even have gotten in the way."
"This is the kind of code I aspire to write.”
I'm looking at the code and just cannot agree. If I look at a command like "TRotateFloatCommand.DoIt" in URotate.p, it's 200 lines long without a single comment. I look at a section like this and there's nothing literate about it. I have no idea what it's doing or why at a glance:
Just breaking up the function with comments delineating its four main sections and what they do would be a start. As would simple things like commenting e.g. what purpose 'pt' serves -- the code block above is where it is first defined, but you can't guess what its purpose is until later when it's finally used.Good code does not make comments unnecessary or redundant or harmful. This is a myth that needs to die. Comments help you understand code much faster, understand the purpose of variables before they get used, and understand the purpose of functions and parameters when their short names cannot possibly communicate those things in sufficient detail.
> 2. Restrictions. Except as expressly specified in this Agreement, you may not: (a) transfer, sublicense, lease, lend, rent or otherwise distribute the Software or Derivative Works to any third party; or (b) make the functionality of the Software or Derivative Works available to multiple users through any means, including, but not limited to, by uploading the Software to a network or file-sharing service or through any hosting, application services provider, service bureau, software-as-a-service (SaaS) or any other type of services. You acknowledge and agree that portions of the Software, including, but not limited to, the source code and the specific design and structure of individual modules or programs, constitute or contain trade secrets of Museum and its licensors.
Edit: Disappointed is really not the right word but I am failing at finding the right word.
1) these historical source code releases really are largely historical interest only. The original programs had constraints of memory and cpu speed that no modern use case does; the set of use cases for any particular task today is very different; what users expect and will tolerate in UI has shifted; available programming languages and tooling today are much better than the pragmatic options of decades past. If you were trying to build a Unix clone today there is no way you would want to start with the historical release of sixth edition. Even xv6 is only "inspired by" it, and gets away with that because of its teaching focus. Similarly if you wanted to build some kind of "streamlined lightweight photoshop-alike" then starting from scratch would be more sensible than starting with somebody else's legacy codebase.
2) In this specific case the licence agreement explicitly forbids basically any kind of "running with it" -- you cannot distribute any derivative work. So it's not surprising that nobody has done that.
I think Doom and similar old games are one of the few counterexamples, where people find value in being able to run the specific artefact on new platforms.
> When will we get the linux port of Photoshop 1.0?
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
This makes the license transitive so that derived works are also MIT licensed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License?wprov=sfti1#Licens...
*: which unfortunately most users of MIT libraries do not follow as I often have an extremely difficult time finding the OSS licenses in their software distributions
AGPL and GPL are, on the other hand, as you describe.
Words have meaning and all that.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
* If a country doesn't have "closed borders" then many foreigners can visit if they follow certain rules around visas, purpose, and length of stay. If instead anyone can enter and live there with minimal restrictions we say it has "open borders".
* If a journal isn't "closed access" it is free to read. If you additionally have permissions to redistribute, reuse, etc then it's "open access".
* If an organization doesn't practice "closed meetings" then outsiders can attend meetings to observe. If it additionally provides advance notice, allows public attendance without permission, and records or publishes minutes, then it has “open meetings.”
* A club that doesn't have "closed membership" is open to admitting members. Anyone can join provided they meet relevant criteria (if any) then it's "open membership".
* A set that is open can also be closed.
Just supporting a modern OS's graphical API (The pre-OSX APIs are long dead and unsupported) is a major effort.
https://fsck.technology/software/Silicon%20Graphics/Software...
It wasn't even broadband that destroyed that experience, when CDs came around developers realised they had space to just stick a PDF version of the manual on the CD itself and put in a slip that tells you to stick in the CD, run autorun.exe if it didn't already, and refer to the manual on the CD for the rest!
They weren’t like textbooks, which have knowledge that tends to be relevant for decades. You’d get a new set with every software release, making the last 5-20 lbs of manuals obsolete.
You did lose some of the readability of an actual book. Hard-copy manuals were better for that. But for most software manuals, I did more “look up how to do this thing” than reading straight through. And with a pdf on a CD you had much better search capabilities. Before that you’d have to rely on the ToC, the book index and your own notes. For many manuals, the index wasn’t great. Full text search was a definite step up.
Even the good ones, like the 1980s IBM 2-ring binder manuals, which had good indexes, were a pain to deal with and couldn’t functionally match a PDF or text file on a CD for searchability.
Even some well-documented modern software is obviously documented by the programmers and programmer-adjacent.
I think all floppies are magical :)
Back in time, black were ordinary, and only white/grey ones were for licensed software, thus more desirable.
https://computerhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/photo...
E.g: https://c7.alamy.com/comp/2AA9BC4/ajaxnetphoto-2019-worthing...
OMG. Booch?? The father of UML is still around? Given that UML is a true crime against humanity, it just goes to show there is no justice in the world. (I want a lifespan refund for the amount of time I spent learning UML and Design Patterns back in the bad old Enterprise Java days. Oof)
For trivial CRUD apps, and maintaining modified versions of the generated code was a nightmare.
Note this is a toxic license. Accepting it and/or reading of the code has potential for legal liability.
Still, applaud releasing the source code, even if encumbered. Preservation is most important, and any legal teeth will eventually expire with the copyright.
I feel like that has changed? Even Blender felt good the last time I used it, Firefox became kinda fine, though these are probably bad examples as they are both mainstream software. But what about OSS that is used primarily by OSS enthusiasts? What about GIMP now?
Unfortunately, designers are rare among the FOSS community. You can't attract real casual or professional users if you don't recognize the value of professional UI/UX.
> To change GIMP to single-window mode (merging panels into one window), go to "Windows" in the top menu and select or check "Single-Window Mode"; this merges all elements like the Toolbox, Layers, and History into one unified view.
and having the source available didnt help so far either :-))
could you please show me a good textting tool plugin for GIMP, then?
you can check their forums & other sites: the textingtools is on top of their discussion lists?
So can you expand why you think the text tool, is bad?
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/GIMP/comments/1fecr6u/suggestion_im...
Its just the first two results from top of Google.
Maybe the tool was improved in version 3.0, I'm running an older 2.x version. I will check it next time.
The versions were difficult in: - font size applying - random loss / reset settings - there were some issues with the preview when editting - font preview before selection etc.
The strange font sizes and setting reset was mostly fixed as part of the 2020 massive refactor [0]. There are still some minor inconsistencies between the two font editor panels, but they're being worked on.
Thankfully, you shouldn't have any random setting changes since about 2018 build.
[0] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/344
And thats the irony covered in my post: Even that the source is available didnt motivate someone enough so far to create better version of the built