Ideas:

• lo-res plasma
• flying toasters
• melt

When the Calculator window is being drawn the cursor is hidden. When it is shown again the bitmap is mangled.

The code includes a call to A2D_SET_CURSOR and embeds an entire cursor definition (with bitmap/mask/hotspot), seemingly to work around this bug.

Show Image File locks up the desktop after exiting under MouseDesk; its fine under A2D

Possibly the missing jsr $8E00 .byte $0C .addr $0000 after destroying the window?

Like the old Mac control panel.

Could persist by writing into the DESKTOP.SYSTEM binary with no new DeskTop code, or an API/settings file could be added.

Could be integrated into main "get input" routine.

Would break the "Show Image" DA as-is, since it naively overwrites the menu bar. So would probably require API additions.

Show system stats: model, ROM version, OS version, memory, slot scan

... so that images are in color, but the desktop is monochrome when DA exits.

Eventually things go bad when Check Drives etc. is used too many times.

See AppleWin/AppleWin#523

Some non-Apple 80 column cards with DHR support allowed software control of DHGR monochrome vs. color. (My Laser 128EX has a hardware switch, some monitors had color killer buttons.)

Since A2D assumes monochrome, might as well try to support this for emulators/hardware that can be forced into monochrome mode while A2D is running. It seems like it's a combination of softswitches then remembering to set/clear the otherwise unused high bit.

This would likely require changes to the GUI library (which may leave the high bits in a random state; need to inspect all the code) and anything like the (new) Image Viewer DA that writes directly to the screen buffer.

There’s a ProDOS MACHID but signaling if a known clock is installed. If set, setting the date/time fields is silly as they’ll be overwritten. The DA should be read-only if a clock is present.

GEOS can copy ordinary ProDOS files. Seems only fair that A2D should be able to copy GEOS files (with normally illegal characters in the filenames).

At most 20 files can be dragged; can this be increased?

The "loader" code includes an unused fourth segment that can dump an image of the screen to an ImageWriter II printer hooked up via an SSC in Slot 1. This is never placed in memory but would reside in pages 2/3 where the "invoker" lives.

It looks like this was hooked into the main input logic and would intercept OA-CA-P; possibly it was hacked in for some builds in order to generate screenshots for the manual.

Finding a place to store this and activate it would be pretty cool.

See https://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Services/PDA/IIc+DrvStop.txt

Due to a bug in the firmware of the IIc+, internal and external drives continue running when using A2Desktop v1.1.

We should try to build a workaround in.

Repro:

1. Launch Calculator DA (via Apple menu)
2. Drag calculator to the bottom of the screen so that only the title bar is visible and let go
3. Use keyboard to enter digits, e.g. type 1 2 3

The display will paint above the calculator itself.

From https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/ground.icaen.uiowa.edu/MiscInfo/Misc/mousedesk.info

7. Fix the bug in the TEXT READER desk accessory that forces it to error and only allow exiting when the end of a file is reached, whether the window was being read and scrolled, or if the elevator (thumb) was moved down lower than the length of the file.

Using NORMFAST code. See csa2 thread.

Control for FastChip, Laser 128EX, etc.

(17 turns into 95)

The Apple-released version (Apple II Desktop) was modified to have GS-specific exit code. This means it crashes when used on an 8-bit system.

Adjust time (and date) of NSC

Offer a command to launch BASIC.SYSTEM with PREFIX set to a window's directory.

Maybe search for BS up the path from the window first, then start from A2D's directory and go up from there.

Set cursor to a + or ⌖ symbol. When clicked, query the target and report on the window's properties.

As a DeskTop window is being redrawn the cursor appears to be hidden/shown for each icon. If correct, this would impact performance. The cursor should be hidden before each window redraw, shown again afterwards.

Desktop boots normally and allows user input (click menus, etc). After a couple seconds Desktop crashes to the monitor. I suspect Desktop is crashing trying to directly call the device driver for the 3rd CFFA smartport volume which has been remapped by ProDOS 2.x to an empty slot.

The crash does not happen with ProDOS 1.x, or if the CFFA is restricted to mounting only 2 volumes.

From https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/ground.icaen.uiowa.edu/MiscInfo/Misc/mousedesk.info

1. Increase the number of desktop volumes to 13, as MD1 allows. Do this by decreasing the size of the volume icons, limiting their "displayed" name size for the bottom row (after all, who picks 15 character names for HD volumes?), or simply using the same layout as MD1. It's hard to give up 96 Megs of disk space!

The Sort Directory DA sorts directory contents by selection order (using OA-click to select multiple), and the remaining entries alphabetically.

But if you just want alphabetical sorting, you need to first select an icon, then unselect it, or the DA does nothing.

Trigger is mysterious, but sometimes (often? usually?) the cursor jumps to the upper left corner of the screen after the Calculator window appears.

Like the classic XEyes, a:

• movable
• resizable
• window that draws eyes that track the mouse

DOS3.3.Launcher support (file types $F1…$F4, aux type 0)

Requires following general ProDOS 8 Startup Protocol support

Possible complication: $F1 type is used for the DAs as well.

Double clicks are not recognized as such when the machine (real or virtual) is faster than about 2MHz.

Observed on both Virtual ][ (emulation) and Laser 128EX (at 3.6MHz)

Add the ability to choose move instead of copy when dragging files, e.g. via modifier keys.

Possibly switch the default to match modern operating systems (move is the default if the source/destination are same-volume, copy otherwise)

The Date DA attempts to persist the updated date bytes to "MD.SYSTEM", presumably so that is used on the next startup if there is no clock.

With A2D there is no such file.

Check to see if this is used in DESKTOP.SYSTEM and, if so, update the path.

• Escape - exit
• Arrow keys - scroll

Like clang-format but less smart

Ensure it only modified white space.

Like Notepad

When navigating down directories, the naive "keep opening windows" approach makes the desktop very cluttered. Either:

• Allow "navigating" a window to point at a different folder without opening a one (like most modern OSs), or
• Allow closing the previous window when opening a directory (e.g. via modifier keys)

... and any other popular image formats.

See https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/ground.icaen.uiowa.edu/MiscInfo/Misc/mousedesk.info

5. Add "FIND FILE" ability Sorely missed, this ability is best substituted by its equivalent in AppleWorks' T.O. DirecTree. There is a stand alone program from April 1989's Nibble Magazine called "Where.Is" that does search out and find files, but on hard drives, it's slower than molasses.

• Escape - exit
• Arrows - prev/next file (?)
• Space - toggle B&W/Color (IIgs, etc)

It can do padding (fill) etc.

The initialization code pokes a IIgs softswitch (NEWVIDEO) to force monochrome mode during DeskTop launch. This state is not reset when launching other programs, thus preventing them from displaying color.

SmartPort HDs appear as floppies on Laser 128 w/ Floppy Emu

No repro on Virtual II (which has its "OmniDisk" smartport drive). Possibilities include:

• A2D is interpreting anything from the Laser's LIRON-ish SmartPort as a floppy
• FloppyEmu is reporting itself incorrectly
• ???

Need to attempt to repro on a non-Laser with LIRON and FloppyEmu and a non-Laser with a IIc or IIgs.

Useful when swapping floppies but keeping HD windows open

See also: https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/ground.icaen.uiowa.edu/MiscInfo/Misc/mousedesk.info

9. Return the option of checking just one volume on the desktop for changes (new floppy in drive), allowing for 13 volumes, or just for Slot 6, drives 1 and 2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm4D1wtWPck&t=986s

ProDOS 2.4 comes with BASIS.SYSTEM which is used by Bitsy Bye to to launch files beyond BASIC and SYSTEM. The vision is that it could maintain a file/aux type mapping to launch appropriate handler apps that follow the "interpreter" protocol.

(See ProDOS TRM 5.1.5.1 - Starting System Programs for the protocol. TL;DR: jmp start; .byte $EE, $EE, buffer_length; .res buffer_length; start: ...)

So... any file type which is double-clicked could be launched this way. If BASIS.SYSTEM can't handle it it will QUIT back to ProDOS which should re-launch A2D.

Reported on comp.sys.apple2:

In addition to the IIc+ constant internal disk access bug, the mouse pointer tends to drop down to the bottom of the screen and stay there on the IIc+. This happens at normal and fast speed.

Discovered via code inspection (yay!)

Repro:

1. Launch Calculator DA (via Apple menu)
2. Drag calculator window over a desktop icon (e.g. Trash, disks) and let go
3. Drag calculator to the bottom of the screen so that only the title bar is visible and let go

The icons fail to redraw.

This appears to be a bug in the code; after a drag the window position is checked and a flag is set if the top of the client area is below the screen. This flag could be used to avoid an unnecessary repaint if the client area is offscreen although it is not. Instead, the flag is used to skip repainting the desktop icons. But given the above repro steps this means the icons won't be redrawn given the above repro steps.

The optimization seems unnecessary, given how rarely it would be used in practice.

... or add it to the Set Date DA.

The existing menu items have (by modern standards) unusual names and non-intuitive shortcuts.

Examples:

• "Rename an Icon..." - why not just "Rename..." ?

Others...?