nstepp / ascii85x

Displays TI-85 variable files as text

ascii85x

Introduction

This module is meant to display information from TI-85 variable files in a human readable way.

There were a few reasons for making this in 2021:

1. ascii85p, an ancient program for displaying program text, does not come with source code
2. TokenIDE, a more modern and very featureful tool, is written in C#, and I didn't want to use mono.
3. TokenIDE also does not come with source code.
4. Just let me have some fun.

Background

Perhaps you, like many technically minded folks who went through school with their trusty TI calculator, have a catalog of TI-BASIC programs that you wrote for both fun and utility.

If I look through my backup directory and see RND.85p, I might wonder what's in there and try vim RND.85p:

**TI85**^Z^L^@Group file dated Sun Sep 26 16:12:47 202^@^@^L^A^G^@^A^A^R^CRND^A^Aÿ^@D0^@^K3AoD0^@^K3BoD0^@^K3CoD0^@^K3DoD0^@^K3SoD0^@^K=^DoD100^@^K=^Eo¡D35^@^K=^FoD35^@^K=^GoD25^@^K=^BoD5^@^K=^Coìo<91>o<83>oÛ^P^PCUD22^@^Q@^P3CSD500^@^Q^QoØ^P^P¥^PApD2^@^Q^QPD1^@^QoÙo3A`D1^@^K3AoÚo3B`D1^@^K3BoÞo3C`D1^@^K3Co3S`^P3Aa3B^Q^K3So<98>^P3CqD5^@/3Aa3B^Qo<98>^P3CqD5^@/3Sq3C^QoÞoë^PD2^@/D1^@/3Aoë^PD3^@/D1^@/3Boë^PD4^@/D1^@/3Sq3Cv?

Not so nice. As mentioned above, there are some options for decoding these files, but they didn't work for me, so I made ascii85x.

$ ascii85x RND.85p

Program "RND":
0→A
0→B
0→C
0→D
0→S
0→xMin
100→xMax
-35→yMin
35→yMax
25→xScl
5→yScl
ClLCD
FnOff 
ClDrw
While ((getKy≠22) and (C<=500))
If ((int(rand*2))==1)
Then
A+1→A
Else
B+1→B
End
C+1→C
S+(A-B)→S
PtOn(C/5,A-B)
PtOn(C/5,S/C)
End
Outpt(2,1,A
Outpt(3,1,B
Outpt(4,1,S/C

Much better!

Usage

ascii85x will read and display any variable or group file as output by the TI-85 link backup utility. The variable types supported are:

Type	Extension
RealValue	85n
ComplexValue	85c
Vector	85v
List	85l
Matrix	85m
Constant	85k
Equation	85y
String	85s
Program	85p
Picture	85i
Settings	85?
GDB	85d

A group file (85g) may contain many of these types of variables.

$ ascii85x --help
Usage: ascii85x [-i|--info] [-D|--debug] [-v|--verbose] VARFILE [-V|--version]
  Convert TI-85 variable files to text

Available options:
  -i,--info                Show file info only
  -D,--debug               Show extra variable details
  -v,--verbose             Show variable file summary
  VARFILE                  85x variable file
  -V,--version             Show version only
  -h,--help                Show this help text

ascii85x's Issues

Support GDB types

• Func
• Polar
• Param
• Diff

Support picture type

Support Settings types

• Func
• Polar
• Param
• Diff

Support saved window size

Backup file parsing

Add ability to parse 85b backup files.

Support encoding

Add a Text -> VarType -> Variable function that encodes text into what could then be included in a variable file.

Whitespace handling

When displaying tokenized programs, some tokens should be accompanied by whitespace or opening parens.

TI Code page should allow multi-char entires

The code page defined in Data.TI85.Encoding should be Array Word8 Text, since some entries really call for multiple characters (e.g. superscript -1).