IES

When the IES project was announced two months ago, it was an online program editor for TI-BASIC/Axe/Grammer projects. After adding stuff like syntax highlighting and inline sprite editing it became closer to an IDE, but what I've always wanted to do was to create an online tool that would let you create and edit any TI variable, not just programs.

The first variable type I'm adding support for (besides programs) is Picture. You can now drag-and-drop your 8XIs, GIFs, PNGs, and other images and IES will automatically resize and crop it to a calculator-sized image in two-, three-, and four-level grayscale.

I'll post more information on it later, but you can then use your left and right mouse buttons to edit the picture's front and back images.

I'm not sure how appvars will work (maybe a hex editor), but I'm not planning to support apps.

Next up are strings, lists, matrices, and real numbers.

So "later" turns out to be three weeks later...

Anyway, clicking the + tab doesn't immediately create a new program file anymore, instead showing a drop-down to select the file type to create (more will be added in the future). When you create a new Image, a new tab is created with an image editor.

This editor doesn't necessarily map to a specific picture variable (in fact, the name of the tab is simply "Picture" followed by the next number in sequence). Instead, it represents a complete image, whether it's monochrome (involving one Pic variable) or 3- or 4-level grayscale (involving two). Either way, what gets put into the download file when you hit Export is whatever Pic variables the image uses. If the image is grayscale, the app will prevent you from selecting the same Pic for the front and back buffer, but there is no check to make sure two separate images don't use the same Pic variables.

Like with programs, you can create a new image in one of three ways:

• Click the + tab
• Click Open and browse to an image file (GIF, PNG, JPEG, WBMP, or 8XI)
• Drag-and-drop an image file (GIF, PNG, JPEG, WBMP, or 8XI)

Images that are not TI Pic variables (8XIs) are converted to four-level grayscale. You can then change that to monochrome or three-level grayscale in the editor.

If the image you select is larger than 96x64, it gets scaled down to fit.

Things to be added in the future:

• Continuous drawing
• Generic editing tools (line, oval, rectangle, flood-fill, etc.)
• Export back to PNG/GIF/JPEG
• Undo/redo support
• Warning before closing unsaved image