Just to ask: why GPL3 and not MIT?

The work put into firebird should always be accessible to everyone in form of source code, the MIT license allows to use any part of the source in any product (even commercial) without having to open source it as well.

Quote from: Vogtinator on December 08, 2015, 12:22:34 am

You can still use the PRG file, even if your ndless_resources supports Zehn. It will detect that automatically and load the Zehn part of the file directly.

Yes, I know. Still, the Ndless 3.1 and 3.6 archives should be updated.

Or even better, point to the same file, containing the current release with all installers.

While trying to reposition some of the floating docks, I clicked by mistake on the Close icon ( right beside the Redimension icon ).

Simply right click on the space on the right of the menu bar. You can unhide all docks that way.

Meanwhile before implementing such feature, a paliative would be to start Firebird Interface on Tabs mode, or at least indicate the existence of that option for the naive users on a README file.

The tab interface is going to be removed at some point, as the docks interface is in every way superior.

The Flash Menu could be improved if it include the option of not only Saving a Flash Image, but also of Loading another previously saved ( or already available one ), without the need of opening the Settings / Nspire tabs and selecting a Flash Image and Boot1 file ( from that tab options ).

In my TODO list, there's an entry for "Kits": Pre-selected combinations of Boot1+Flash, selectable from within a menu.

Also at the Create Flash Image menu, Boot1 is indicated by a Manuf tag and placed below Boot2 which shows up a bit confusing for the naive user to fully understand that a Boot1 file is required at that point.

Without boot1 selected, there is an error message that is displayed on the first start, indicating that boot1 is missing.

A bit more explanations on a README file would let the users know exactly what to provide on each field, with instruction for them how to obtain Boot1 and Boot2 image files from their own physical calculators, by meens of ndless and polydumper.

There were some additions to the firebird wiki recently: https://github.com/nspire-emus/firebird/wiki/First-Time-Setup

While trying to Generate a New image file from the Create Flash Image menu, ( with all the required files provided and correctly identified after each selection, except for the provision of Diags which I left None and selected to Boot from Boot2 and Not Diags ), I ended up with an Application Crash on Windows 7 32bits.
 
   The Boot and OS files I provided were the Same ones I succesfully used on Nspiroid [ https://www.omnimaga.org/ti-nspire-projects/nspiroid-ti-nspire-emulator-on-android-(zenfone-5)/30/ ] and kARM-TI [ https://www.omnimaga.org/ti-nspire-projects/karmti-ti-nspire-emulator-with-skin-16585/420/ ] were I succesfully generated the Flash Image files which I Ported to Firebird ( after Not being able to generate a New Flash Image directly from Firebird, due to the reported Windows application Crash ).

There was a bug introduced recently, but AFAIK it's not present in beta2. Can you reproduce the crash reliably?

Overall my very First impressions on Firebird were very good ones, showing up as a Very Promising Project due mainly to its broad range of covered platforms, with a vast array of implementations, based on a Same common ground, leading its final users to an easier adaption from one platform to another.
 
  The only missing points which deserve a bit more attention by now are an Improved Documentation, by the inclusion of a README file describing in more detail the Boot and Flash Image file creation ( or import ) process,

That's currently being worked on and will be linked to in the release of the next beta version.

and the "definitive" closure state of floating Docks described on the Windows port, and which I dont know if similar behavior could happen on other platforms like Android ( and where I simply do no know how to Restore the equivalent of a Registry entry on a Android ARM Tablet without root access ).

On android it's using the mobile UI by default, although there's a compile-time option to use the desktop UI, in which case the tab interface should be used, as it uses less space.

Thanks very much for All the attention, hoping to have provided Valuable points requiring some attention on future releases of Firebird,

Thanks for the feedback, it is very much appreciated!

PS: A missing option for the Non developer users would be to allow not only for Firebird to Start Emulation Automatically, but Also allowing the choice of starting with focus on the Keypad window open ( in place of the Serial Monitor actually selected and opened by default ). The inclusion of a simple ( exclusive ) Selection option ( by means of Radio Buttons ) between Keypad and Serial Monitor, would allow for such configuration, leaving both developers and common users the ability to opt for their preferred choice of initialization.

That is actually a bug, I just fixed it in the repo. Now it's possible to open firebird and directly use the calc.

I've heard of literally only one weird issue, and it is/was when there were many, many menu items

Two, at least: "Class has ended", visible in KhiCAS and the Ndless 3.6 installer

Hi Vogtinator,

First of all, it is great to finally have an nspire emulator for Android.
I installed it on an S4 mini and it works :-)
It looks nice and, once started up, is quite usable.
Cannot say yet about stability, but looks promising.

Thanks for the feedback! I mainly develop the (ARM emulation) core on a rpi2 and the mobile UI on my laptop,
so having some feedback from those actually using the android part is very appreciated!

I have anyway some comments that I consider quite important to make the app usable:

- The main annoyance (common to all nspire emulators I have tried) is that there is no way to save the state.
  If I exit the emulator and restart (even if I switch to another app and I come back after a bit of time), everything is lost.
  There must be a way to implement saving the current state so that I can "switch off" the emulator and come back
  to the same point when I "switch it on" again.

If you hit the save icon it saves to the flash file, but I guess you mean more "suspend and resume" like.
It was partially implemented (code from ncubate), but there was so much important stuff missing,
that it was just much easier to remove it completely again.
I'll consider adding back support for it, but it isn't that easy.
For instance, the internal data structures of the emulator for USB transfers etc.
and the RAM contents, which make more than 64MiB (data + flags, although the flags may be unnecessary) have to be saved to a temporary file.
That is not only a lot of space it occupies, but also really bad for the storage medium it resides on...

- This might help as well with the second big issue: startup time.
  Whenever I start the app:
  - I have to press the "bomb" several times until it starts booting (I do not really see the point: it should
    just start when when I open the app).
  - Then it takes more than 2 minutes before boot is completed and I can type my expressions
  This makes the emulator unusable as a day-to-day calculator.

I can't really improve that much, as it is using a quite complicated self-built ARM-to-ARM JIT,
but I guess it's not an issue anymore after the suspend-resume feature is implemented.

I am asking myself if there people really USING these emulators or if there only around perosns developing them.
That is for sure a lot of fun, but without true usability, you cannot really get a wide and happy user base.
For this reason I am still using very good and usable TI-48 emulators on my PC and Android phone/tablet.

Firebird is mainly targeted at developers and programmers, for easier file transfer and debugging than HW,
but not really (but it should work just fine) at end-users.

I think that if you concentrate on developing the Android (and IOS) variant (this is what puts you apart from the other branches of the main emulator) you can have a good success among the many kids that use the nspire at school.
I would be for sure available to pay some euros on Google Play for a good emulator.

That's not possible for multiple reasons:
- Firebird is and stays open-source
- I'm not 100% sure about the legal issues
- I don't want that anybody has to pay for that
- We're multiple devs, where should the amount go?

It might be I am completely wrong and I did not understand the "right way" of using the emulator.

There is no "right" way. If it works, it works and if it doesn't, something is broken.

I would be gratefull if anybody would comment and tell me how people is using it efficiently.

I'm not "using" (in the sense of making calculations and such) firebird on mobile at all (wouldn't work, I don't have either Android nor iOS devices),
but the desktop version does not really suffer from the startup time. Especially the much bigger cache (I believe, I didn't really benchmark that) on desktop CPUs has a big benefit on emulation speed. So it is just as you described, start firebird, wait a few seconds until it's loaded, do stuff, save occasionally and close it.

There's also a web utility to convert pdfs into lua code (as stupid as it sounds...) on tiplanet.org: https://tiplanet.org/forum/editgx.php

How do I reopen closed docks/tabs? One day, just for fun, I closed every tab and now I cant seem to bring them up again. I'm on the windows 0.20 build (windows 7 x64 professional)

Just right click on the free space of the menu bar (right of the "Flash" menu).
On Mac the issue is that there is no (real) menu bar, so it's impossible to open a dock if they're all closed, so it's disabled to close them all on Mac.

Works without issues on my other computer so far.

Glad to hear, thanks!