Consider:
LDA $00 loads a value from address $00
LDA $00,X might load from $00, or might not
LDA ($00),Y dereferences $00 as a 16-bit pointer
LDA ($00,X) dereferences a pointer, not necessarily from $00
When perusing the cross-reference list, it's useful to be able to
tell whether an instruction is accessing the location, using it as a
base address, or deferencing it as a pointer. We now show "ptr" in
the list for pointer dereferences. (We already showed "idx" for
indexed accesses.)
The "show cycle counts in comments" setting is the only one that
affects both the on-screen display and generated source code. This
felt a little weird, so it's now two independent settings. This
also provided an opportunity to move it to the initial tab, so it's
easier to toggle on and off. Overall it feels less confusing to have
two settings for essentially the same thing, because code generation
is distinct from everything else.
The "spaces between bytes" setting was moved to the Display Format
tab, which seems a better fit.
Documentation and tutorial have been updated.
Also did a little bit of cleanup in EditAppSettings.
This experimental feature applied platform symbols to the project,
setting labels where the platform symbol's address matched an internal
address. The feature now applies project symbols as well, and has
been renamed to "apply external symbols".
We now report the number of labels set.
First, make the per-segment comments and notes optional.
Second, add an "offset segment by $0100" feature that tries to shift
each segment forward 256 bytes. Doing so avoids potential ambiguity
with direct page locations.
The 20212-reloc-data test no longer has the per-segment comments.
The "smart" PLP handler tries to recover the flags from an earlier
PHP. The non-smart version just marks all the flags as indeterminate.
This doesn't work well on the 65816 in native mode, because having
the M/X flags in an indeterminate state is rarely what you want.
Code rarely uses PLP to reset the flags to a specific state, preferring
explicit SEP/REP. The analyzer is more likely to get the correct
answer by simply leaving the flags in their prior state.
A test case has been added to 20052-branches-and-banks, which now has
"smart PLP" disabled.
Long operands, such as strings and bulk data, can span multiple lines.
SourceGen wraps them at 64 characters, which is fine for assembly
output but occasionally annoying on screen: if the operand column is
wide enough to show the entire value, the comment column is pushed
pretty far to the right.
This change makes the width configurable, as 32/48/64 characters,
with a pop-up in app settings.
The assemblers are all wired to 64 characters, though we could make
this configurable as well with an assembler-specific setting.
Some things have moved around a bit in app settings. The Asm Config
tab now comes last. Having it sandwiched in the middle of tabs that
altered the on-screen display didn't make much sense. The Display
Format is now explicitly for opcodes and operands, and is split into
two columns. The left column is managed by the "quick set" feature,
the right column is independent.
Another chapter in the never-ending AppDomain security saga.
If a computer goes to sleep while SourceGen is running with a project
open, life gets confusing when the system wakes up. The keep-alive
timer fires and a ping is sent to the remote AppDomain, successfully.
At the same time, the lease expires on the remote side, and the objects
are discarded (apparently without bothering to query the ILease object).
This failure mode is 100% repeatable.
Since we can't prevent sandbox objects from disappearing, we have to
detect and recover from the problem. Fortunately we don't keep any
necessary state on the plugin side, so we can just tear the whole
thing down and recreate it.
The various methods in ScriptManager now do a "health check" before
making calls into the plugin AppDomain. If the ping attempt fails,
the AppDomain is "rebooted" by destroying it and creating a new one,
reloading all plugins that were in there before. The plugin binaries
*should* still be in the PluginDllCache directory since the ping failure
was due to objects being discarded, not AppDomain shutdown, and Windows
doesn't let you mess with files that hold executable code.
A new "reboot security sandbox" option has been added to the DEBUG
menu to facilitate testing.
The PluginManager's Ping() method gets called more often, but not to
the extent that performance will be affected.
This change also adds a finalizer to DisasmProject, since we're relying
on it to shut down the ScriptManager, and it's relying on callers to
invoke its cleanup function. The finalizer throws an assertion if the
cleanup function doesn't get called.
(Issue #82)
Changed "Use Keep-Alive Hack" to "Disable Keep-Alive Hack" to emphasize
that it defaults to enabled. Added a menu item for "Disable Security
Sandbox". Added a warning to both that tells the user that they must
reopen the current project for the change to take effect.
Note neither of these is persisted in app settings.
The new name is more indicative of the purpose of the directory.
Updated the docs to point out that you can delete the contents any
time you want, so long as SourceGen isn't running at the time.
Also, change the default column widths for the exporter.
When we have relocation data available, the code currently skips the
process of matching an address with a label for a PEA instruction when
the instruction in question doesn't have reloc data. This does a
great job of separating code that pushes parts of addresses from code
that pushes constants.
This change expands the behavior to exclude instructions with 16-bit
address operands that use the Data Bank Register, e.g. "LDA abs"
and "LDA abs,X". This is particularly useful for code that accesses
structured data using the operand as the structure offset, e.g.
"LDX addr" / "LDA $0000,X"
The 20212-reloc-data test has been updated to check the behavior.
Implemented "smart" PLB handling. If we see PHK/PLB, or 8-bit
LDA imm/PHA/PLB, we create a data bank change item. The feature
can be disabled with a project property.
On the 65816, 16-bit data access instructions (e.g. LDA abs) are
expanded to 24 bits by merging in the Data Bank Register (B). The
value of the register is difficult to determine via static analysis,
so we need a way to annotate the disassembly with the correct value.
Without this, the mapping of address to file offset will sometimes
be incorrect.
This change adds the basic data structures and "fixup" function, a
functional but incomplete editor, and source for a new test case.
The Absolute Indirect and Absolute Indirect Long addressing modes
(e.g. "JMP (addr)" and "JMP [addr]") are 16-bit values in bank 0.
The code analyzer was placing them in the program bank, which
meant the wrong symbol was being used.
Also, tweak some docs.
This was a relatively lightweight change to confirm the usefulness
of relocation data. The results were very positive.
The relatively superficial integration of the data into the data
analysis process causes some problems, e.g. the cross-reference table
entries show an offset because the code analyzer's computed operand
offset doesn't match the value of the label. The feature should be
considered experimental
The feature can be enabled or disabled with a project property. The
results were sufficiently useful and non-annoying to make the setting
enabled by default.
Code generated for 64tass was incorrect for JSR/JMP to a location
outside the file bounds. A test added to 20052-branches-and-banks
revealed an issue with cc65 generation as well.
It's nice to be able to save images from the visualization editor
for display elsewhere. This can be done during HTML export, but
that's inconvenient when you just want one image, and doesn't allow
the output size to be specified.
This change adds an Export button to the Edit Visualization dialog.
The current bitmap, wireframe, or wireframe animation can be saved
to a GIF image. A handful of sizes can be selected from a pop-up
menu.
If you double-click on the opcode of an instruction whose operand is
an address or equate, the selection jumps to that address. This
feature is now available in the Navigate menu, with the keyboard
shortcut Ctrl+J.
While testing the feature I noticed that the keyboard focus wasn't
following the selection, so if you jumped to an address and then
used the up/down arrows, you jumped back to the previous location.
(This was true when double-clicking an opcode to jump; it was just
less noticeable since the next action was likely mouse-based.) This
has been fixed by updating the ListView item focus when we jump to a
new location.
See also issue #63 and issue #72.
Added a visualizer for the CHR ROM pattern tables, and a semi-useful
visualizer for tile grids.
Also added a few chars in an 8x8 font that visualizers can use to
label things.
Sometimes it's useful to know whether an address referenced by a
function is a direct access, or is being used as a base address.
(I'm somewhat undecided on this one, since it clutters up the list
a bit. Giving it a try.)
- Freeze Note brushes, so HTML export doesn't blow up when it tries
to access them.
- Add Ctrl+Shift+E as keyboard shortcut for File > Export.
- For code/data percentage, count inline data as data.
- Tweak code/data percentage text.
- Document Merlin32 '{' bug.
- Tweak tutorial text.
There's no "standard" coordinate system, so the choice is arbitrary.
However, an examination of the Transporter mesh in Elite revealed
that the mesh was designed for a left-handed coordinate system. We
can compensate for that trivially in the Elite visualizer, but we
might as well match what they're doing. (The only change required
in the code is a couple of sign changes on the Z coordinate, and an
update to the rotation matrix.)
This also downsizes Matrix44 to Matrix33, exposes the rotation mode
enum, and adds a left-handed ZYX rotation mode.
This does mean that meshes that put the front at +Z will show their
backsides initially, since we're now oriented as if we're flying
the ships rather than facing them. I considered adding a 180-degree
Y rotation (with a tweak to the rotation matrix handedness to correct
the first rotation axis) to have them facing by default, but figured
that might be confusing since +Z is supposed to be away.
Anybody who really wants it to be the other way can trivially flip
the coordinates in their visualizer (negate xc/zc).
The Z coordinates in the visualization test project were flipped so
that the design is still facing the viewer at rotation (0,0,0).
Also, tweak the perspective projection scaling to fill out the area
a bit more, and change the visualization editor to use the grid's
size when setting the path dimensions.
Also, note gimbal lock.
Added a new category "sprite sheet", which is essentially a more
generalized version of the bitmap font renderer. It has the full
set of options for col/row/cell stride and colors. (Issue #74,
issue #75)
Added a flag that flips the high bits on bitmaps. Sometimes data
is stored with the high bit clear, but the high bit is set as it's
rendered. (Issue #76)
Also, fixed the keyboard shortcuts in the Edit Visualization Set
window, which were 'N' for both "New ___" items. (Issue #57)
Added "show undocumented opcodes" checkbox, so you can choose
whether or not to see them at all. (Issue #60)
Added formatter call for the instruction mnemonics so they get
capitalized when the app is configured for upper-case opcodes.
(Issue #59)
Fix a bug where the instruction chart and ASCII chart were writing
their modes to the same setting, stomping each other.
Also, pluralized a button in the file concatenator.
The tool allows you to cut a piece out of a file by specifying an
offset and a length. A pair of hex dumps helps you verify that the
positions are correct.
Also, minor cleanups elsewhere.
Defined a simple monochrome bitmap format, and created some pieces
for a Tic-Tac-Toe game. Wrote a tutorial that explains how to
visualize them.
Also, updated some comments.
If you have a single line selected, Set Address adds a .ORG directive
that changes the addresses of all following data, until the next .ORG
directive is reached. Sometimes code will relocate part of itself,
and it's useful to be able to set the address at the end of the block
to what it would have been before the .ORG change.
If you have multiple lines selected, we now add the second .ORG to
the offset that follows the last selected line.
Also, fixed a bug in the Symbol value updater that wasn't handling
non-unique labels correctly.
As with still images, animations are rendered at original size and
then scaled with HTML properties.
Also, fixed the blurry scaling on animation thumbnails. I couldn't
find a way to do nearest-neighbor scaling in the code-behind without
resorting to System.Drawing (WinForms), so I added an overlay image
to the various grids.
Visualization animations are now exported as animated GIFs. The
Windows stuff is a bit lame so I threw together some code that
stitches a bunch of GIFs together.
The GIF doesn't quite match the preview, because the preview scales
the individual frames, while the animated GIF uses the largest frame
as the size and is then scaled based on that. Animating frames of
differing sizes together is bound to be trouble anyway, so I'm not
sure how much to fret over this.
This adds a new class and a rough GUI for the editor. Animated
visualizations take a collection of bitmaps and display them in
sequence. (This will eventually become an animated GIF.)
Fixed the issue where changes to tags in the set currently being
edited weren't visible to the tag uniqueness check when editing other
items in the same set.
We now generate GIF images for visualizations and add inline
references to them in the HTML output.
Images are scaled using the HTML img properties. This works well
on some browsers, but others insist on "smooth" scaling that blurs
out the pixels. This may require a workaround.
An extra blank line is now added above visualizations. This helps
keep the image and data visually grouped.
The Apple II bitmap test project was updated to have a visualization
set with multiple images at the top of the file.
(1) Added an option to limit the number of bytes per line. This is
handy for things like bitmaps, where you might want to put (say) 3
or 8 bytes per line to reflect the structure.
(2) Added an application setting that determines whether the screen
listing shows Merlin/ACME dense hex (20edfd) or 64tass/cc65 hex bytes
($20,$ed,$fd). Made the setting part of the assembler-driven display
definitions. Updated 64tass+cc65 to use ".byte" as their dense hex
pseudo-op, and to use the updated formatter code. No changes to
regression test output.
(Changes were requested in issue #42.)
Also, added a resize gripper to the bottom-right corner of the main
window. (These seem to have generally fallen out of favor, but I
like having it there.)
Added comments, renamed files, removed cruft.
Stop showing the visualization tag name in the code list. It's
often redundant with the code label, and it's distracting. (We may
want to make this an option so you can Ctrl+F to find a tag.)
First swing at a visualizer for Atari 2600 sprites and playfields.
Won't necessarily present an accurate view of what is displayed on
screen, but should provide a reasonable shape for data stored in
the obvious way.
The Adventure playfields looked squashed, so I added a simple row
duplication value.
Also, minor improvements to visualizers generally:
- Throw an exception, rather than an Assert, in VisBitmap8 when the
arguments are bad.
- Show the exception in the Visualization Edit dialog.
- If generation fails and we don't have an error message, show a
generic "stuff be broke" string.
- Set focus on OK button in Visualization Set Edit after editing,
so you can hit Enter twice after renaming a tag.
Various changes:
- Generally treat visualization sets like long comments and notes
when it comes to defining data region boundaries. (We were doing
this for selections; now we're also doing it for format-as-word
and in the data analyzer when scanning for strings/fill.)
- Clear the visualization cache when the address map is altered.
This is necessary for visualizers that dereference addresses.
- Read the Apple II screen image from a series of addresses rather
than a series of offsets. This allows it to work when the image
is contiguous in memory but split into chunks in the file.
- Put 1 pixel of padding around the images in the main code list,
so they don't blend into the background.
- Remember the last visualizer used, so we can re-use it the next
time the user selects "new".
- Move min-size hack from Loaded to ContentRendered, as it apparently
spoils CenterOwner placement.
