Casio has expressed concerns about 3rd party developement before and have no plan for a SDK. They didn't expect add-ins to be made by the community, but they have decided to give us one chance and they won't block them unless we start publishing softwares such as image converters for the american models, tools to cheat in tests and stuff that can permanently damage the calc.

That, or the Casio Prizm gets popular and teachers start whining about games and such.

Also Alberthro I know Lua isn't like BASIC, I was saying it's kinda like between ASM/C and BASIC. Not too slow and limited, but not offering 100% speed/freedom either. Basically, good enough to make somewhat cool games, but not enough to pull a gbc4nspire in Lua that will draw hundreds of members to Omnimaga, TI-Planet and ticalc.org whenever Ndless is useable on the latest OS. More programming examples and routine examples (such as map engines, collision detection and data management) could possibly improve Lua audience, though, because the language, while being limited, is kinda underused lately.

Actually, the focus doesn't necessarily have to be on emulators. Even emulators can be written in an upper-level language (though it will be harder, and the results will be slower). I was thinking about porting Angry Birds, Cut the Ropes, etc. that are already popular in the mobile world! Particularly Angry Birds... "Angry Birds ported to TI-Nspire" would certainly elicit an nDoom-like response, if not much bigger. With the new physics engine coming up, it'll be much easier to port those fun little games!

(By the way, that "Lua != Basic" thing was directed to everyone - I know you already knew about the potential. It's just that some people (probably not at Omni, but elsewhere) like to bash Lua to bits and pieces. I like C/C++ better, but even then I still find it pitiful that people could bash it without doing some proper benchmarking.)

I personally should apologize for not contributing much to the Nspire community - even though I made promises back then to write some bFLT loader, I should've realized that I would need time to do such a thing, and I lack it a lot due to my studies taking precedent over everything else. I'm a man of words, not actions it seems...

So... there is a project that I’m planning to work on with a friend here at Omni that I believe will boost Nspire dev significantly.... but it’ll only be during the summer, and ONLY if I have time. Because of that, I’ll let it remain a secret, and offer no guarantees of its completion. If it succeeds, it’ll be released with fanfare. If it doesn’t even get a line of code, it’ll die in secrecy. That way, we won’t disappoint anyone if it doesn’t make it out the door.

(If you want a hint, the project is similar to what Adriweb suggested earlier... which I am also going to try and attempt to do before attempting the secret project I’ve mentioned above.)

You haven't understood, Adriweb: I'm not saying that an improved native code SDK for the Nspire would not be a good thing, but that it can't offset the major downer that the consequences of TI's boneheadedness are.

If the only way to make TI "move" is to release "bad" (as from TI's point of view) tools like a PTT Killer or a CAS on non-CAS (or whatever), it could only cause big troubles which could lead to the end of the Npsire "reign" (i.e : it wouldn't be accepted on exams for example, and TI wouldn't sell as much so they might stop produduction).

Sorry, TI's fears of seeing the Nspire being booted out of exams is a completely delusional and irrational fear. Locking down the way TI did with the PTT mode is obviously in no way required to get a platform certified for exams - otherwise, the TI-Z80 series and the Prizm wouldn't be certified - so even if the Nspire platform's lockdown were to be tampered with, there would be no consequences. Or ar least, there shouldn't be any... but this requires that the incompetents regulating standardized tests (and making them a fatally flawed scheme in many ways) be rational, and expecting rational behaviour from the incompetents to whom the Nspire was oversold as "secure" by incompetents, might be a bit too much.

Tampering with the PTT has not been attempted yet, otherwise chances are good that we'd have found out that tampering is easy... What if the PTT mode were ridiculously easy to tamper with (access to documents, access to native code, access to forbidden math functions, etc.), and creating a new item in the long list of TI's silly mistakes over a couple decades ?
Spending several man-weeks on a crappy scheme, in order to be able to deceive the incompetents ruling standardized tests ("look, we've tried to make our platform secure"), is a very worthwhile investment

@Hoffa, TI (TI-Nspire section) does give a damn about us. They have showed it multiple ways:
- By sending email to all magor TI-Communities
- By contacting several community members, allowing them to beta test stuff
- By listening to multiple of our sugestions

@DJ, the print command was changed for something compatibilty with their upcomming SDK. TI did not think anyone would use it (Seriously, I think they never expected sound through it). I pointed them out to some nice stuff you could do with it, and they will change/revert it in the next dev cycle.

Also, the Lua platform is just becomming popular. It's important to know the Lua enviroment was quite hidden to other people than the community until T3 2012.
TI actively showed Lua (with links to the community) to many teachers, who are now started to have fun with it (you can see the trend on the nspire google group).
Also, many Lua programs are being developed 'underground'. I got some projects I haven't posted yet about, and I'm sure others too.

Now, I don't think the TI community is dying. I think it's in a special fase, as there are many factors we did not have previously.
I have to agree with Adriweb in many points too, and I don't think we have to choose a side. TI knows that many TI-Planet admins such as Adriweb work on Ndless, yet they continue to have contact with them. TI clearly isn't forcing us into choosing a side. And if the community forces us to choose .. well then I know what side I would be on.
But this isn't the case, and I'm happy to be able to work both with TI and the Ndless dev team

The TI community is not dying but the Ndless community is. Chockosta almost gave up programming because of TI's actions. And Lua will never bring us any GBC emulator.
The only thing TI wants to avoid is OS launcher so stop updating it and we might have that "freedom to tinker" you keep asking for. And when I say "stop updating it", it is not "stop updating it during 3 weeks and TI will change, the update it", but "stop updating it".

I'm not the developer of OS launcher, and I'm not the one who is constantly asking for "freedom to tinker".
I think you might have mixed me with someone else.

Just my 2 cents...

Currently, I am using both an 84+ and a CX CAS for development (Terraria 2%). Why am I still using the 84+, you might ask. Because it is easier to program on-calc and has more reach, at least in my school. The CX is great for impressing people, but when it comes to reach, I'm the only one who has one in the entire school. Also, as I don't have access to a computer most of the time, the only way I can develop for it is through oclua, which is certainly not an easy solution. This is the ONLY REASON that I am not using C, or some other compiled language for it. I think that more effort should be focussed on trying to make on-calc IDEs/compilers, as I know I'm not the only one who codes with my calculator as the primary devenv.

I'm not the developer of OS launcher, and I'm not the one who is constantly asking for "freedom to tinker".
I think you might have mixed me with someone else.

I was not talking about you, but "you" in general

As I mentioned above, OSLauncher is perfectly harmless. And there's no valid reason to stop updating this kind of tools: they're perfectly legal.

Yes but TI hates us for this.

[/quote]Yes but TI hates us for this.
[/quote]
Why is that?