Hello, and thank you for subscribing to the ticalc.org bimonthly newsletter. This month, I've decided to spell "bimonthly" unhyphenated, because I finally realized that it actually is an accepted word. After two years of Advanced Placement English courses in high school, one would hope that I would have picked up on that fact in recent months, but then again, I did not pay the same level of attention in those classes as I had in my math classes.

Before I begin my editorial, I would like to congratulate the three new staff members at ticalc.org: Jason Malinowski, Ivan Papusha, and Patrick Stone. Jason and Patrick have taken over handling the file archives of ticalc.org since Joey Gannon's retirement, while Ivan is currently reading and editing reviews. I highly recommend checking out their staff pages (Located in the "About" section of ticalc.org), and perhaps sending them an Email welcoming them to the staff!

For this newsletter, I interviewed Romain Liévin, author of programs such as "TiLP," "TI-Emu," and other fine calculator utilities developed for the computer. During the interview, he brought up some very good points about the ticalc.org file archives: There is a lot of software available for the calculators, but not that many tools and components for developers on the PC platform. Perhaps this is why we have so many BASIC programs in the ticalc.org archives and not enough assembly programs. It is often more difficult for someone to learn how to program in C or a pure assembly language when coming from a BASIC background, but what if there were more tutorials available, or more utilities that developers could access if they needed help? There are certainly a variety of tools available for developers, but not all programmers are aware of their existence.

What we need is a way to encourage more people to program in C and the assembly languages for the calculator. There are some nice tutorials out there on programming in C, z80 ASM, and 68K ASM, but there should be more. There are some nice tools for generating images for calculator programs, or tools for compressing calculator programs, but there should be more. A lot of the tools that are currently available are open source, so what is stopping people in the community from building upon past projects?

I once read in a book on video game development that the best way to advance programs is to share knowledge with one another. Instead of being annoyed with the massive amounts of BASIC programs out there, why not write some tutorials or eBooks on how to program in an assembly language, or C? Or why not create some on-calc tools to help developers work on their programs while they're on the go? There are so many possibilities for tutorials, tools, and components out there, and at the same time, there are so many talented and capable programmers in the ticalc.org community. That's why I challenge the ticalc.org community to try and create more resources that are easily accessible to everyone. Share your experience with your fellow programmers; the rewards of your teachings will surely be known down the road.

I realize that making programming resources more easily available not be possible without some modifications to the ticalc.org site itself. That is why I encourage you to email your suggestions to newsletter@ticalc.org, because it's one of the few ways we know what the ticalc.org community would like to see from the website.

For those of you who just graduated, congratulations. And to everyone else, have a lovely summer, or winter, depending on which side of the equator you are on.

Jonathan Katz

Last Month's Question: If you could change something in or add to the design of future TI calculators, what would it be?

"There are several things I would change about future Ti calculators. The first thing I would do would be to add more memory, maybe something in the range of 8 megabytes? That way, programmers and end-users would not only have room for more lists, pictures, and strings, they would also be able to store more programs.

"The second thing I would do would be to create a better language than TI-BASIC for on-calc programming. As unrealistic as this may seem, perhaps a (simplified) Java Environment could be built into the OS, since Java is cross platform. If more memory was added to the calculator, this could be feasible.

"Another thing that could be done, especially something like Java was added, would be to move beyond grayscale and black and white. This could make for more readable graphs, better games, and, of course, graphics. Finally, a port for a 6V AC-Adapter should be added, like the ones on the old-school GameBoys.

"As much as I love my 84+SE, there are definitely things that could be improved about it. Perhaps ticalc.org should submit the results of this to Texas Instruments. As it is, my TI can do anything a PDA can do, except have color." - Thomas Dickerson

"I would definitely have to say I wish they would add real color capabilities, even if it was just 3-bit color. I have occasionally been doing some math problem or another problem (such as stuff with cellular automata) in which color would have helped. And, of course, it would make games better as well." - Zeroko

"I'm trying really hard to not step over the line and make the future TI a PDA here. If I seriously want to tow the line, then I would want a stylus to draw stuff. It saves the hassle of using MS Paint and the frustrations when drawing with buttons on the calculator. How cool would it be to have a stylus for graphics programmers? "I guess that might be asking too much, though. I do think a faster data transfer (to TI Connect or to another TI) would be nice, but my overall point is that TI is getting really close to the limit before it transforms into a PDA." - Ben Yu

This Month's Question: What kinds of resources should be available to help people to become better programmers on the TI calculator platform?

E-mail your thoughts to newsletter@ticalc.org, and your response may appear in the next newsletter!

Jonathan Katz

Question: What if TI designed people instead of graphing calculators??

Answer: Instead of people being white, black, or shades in between, some of us would be black, very few blue, and some a glittery silver. The silver people would talk 2.5 times as fast and have superior memories.

Whenever someone tried to think of a number beyond 10^99, the brain would overflow and overwrite everything inside the head.

People would talk by plugging link cables into each others' heads. Even after you try to stop receiving his packets, that annoying coworker at the office would use silent linking to continue telling you about his vacation.

The silver-colored people would never need to wear a watch, although after a heart attack they would think the day was January 1, 1997.

Symbolic manipulation abilities would be tested for at sporting events.

Drawing in color would be impossible. Clever people would sketch in black and white and create flipbooks for grayscale.

In order to reach greater enlightenment and mental capacity, one must pray to the creator long and hard. If the prayer is answered, the creator will sign a new base code and download it into your brain. Should you die in the middle of this operation, you are permanently scrambled with no hope of the afterlife.

And last but not least, ticalc.org would have the best archive of repeatable psychological experiments in the world.

Michael Vincent

What kind of bears graph equations on their TI-83 Pluses?

Polar bears.

Why did the assembly programmer get fired from his part-time job at the party store?

He kept PUSHing supplies into customers' faces and then POPing all the balloons.

What key on the TI-83 Plus do bored teenagers like best?

GRAPHiti.

Michael Vincent

Email: roms@lievin.net

Jonathan Katz

There are two versions of the ticalc.org Newsletter, a plain text version and an HTML version. To subscribe, send an e-mail to ecartis@lists.ticalc.org with either "subscribe newsletter" (for plain text) or "subscribe newsletter-html" (for HTML) in the body of the message. To unsubscribe, simply do the same thing except replace "subscribe" with "unsubscribe".

You can find all issues of the ticalc.org Newsletter in our Community section under Newsletter. The exact URL is http://www.ticalc.org/community/newsletter/.

To submit material to the ticalc.org newsletter, e-mail newsletter@ticalc.org.

Any opinions expressed in this newsletter are the opinions of the newsletter editor and/or published authors. By no means are the opinions heretofore expressed to be considered representative of ticalc.org as a whole. Texas Instruments in no way endorses or is affiliated with ticalc.org. Any trademarks are hereby acknowledged as the property of their respective owners.