I think your SourceForge project could probably do with a little bit of work to make it easier for people to work out if they want to use your tool and work out what to download.

For example I went there and I still don't know what you mean by "template". Is this like in Windows where if I right-click and select "New" there are some different types of file I can choose from, and it will make me a copy of one of those template files? Is it like a Jinja template that enables me to generate text according to some rules/code? Maybe this is explained in some document you have available for download, but there are a lot of .txt files there to choose from, and I don't think many people would have the patience to download every file in the hope that they might explain what the tool does. Perhaps you could explain a use case, such as what you use it for.

It seems difficult to work out what to download too.

Also shouldn't you be providing source code since it's an open-source hosting site? Maybe SourceForge have changed their rules and this is no longer necessary.

I'm happy to see that there are screenshots though!

doshea wrote on 2022-02-06, 02:09:

For example I went there and I still don't know what you mean by "template".

I'm wondering about this too. From the screenshots, some sort of disk imaging thing?

It is like the New feature in Windows, and the source code is included with the download. The Windows version adds entries to the New menu to create new files.

I came looking for this project because I want to write my first Turbo Assembler program (I was using inline assembler in Turbo Pascal almost 30 years ago but I've never written a standalone assembler program) and I was hoping to find a template in here for that, but it's just NASM, oh well 😁 I did figure out a bit more about this program (although I didn't try running it) and have some more feedback if you're interested:

doshea wrote on 2022-02-06, 02:09:

It seems difficult to work out what to download too.

Specifically it sounds like you have a DOS version, a Windows version, and one or more Commodore versions. At the top level there are these .zip files:

Picker02.zip
TmpCreatWin.zip
TMPCR02.zip

How would I know which one to download? It would probably be good to structure your downloads into some directories like "DOS", "Windows", "CBM", "Templates" and (if you have some documentation which covers all versions) "Documentation" or something. Then in your README file which appears at the bottom of the directory listing, say something like "Download the latest version for your platform from the DOS, Windows or CBM directory, and download any templates you'd like to add from the Templates directory."

Under the "templates" directory I at least understand what the "dev" and "emu" directories mean, but maybe other people would have found it more useful if they were spelled out as "developer" and "emulators" or something. There is a nice selection there! Only problem I see is that SourceForge is pretty annoying to download files from. Maybe it'd be nice to have one .zip file with all the emulator templates, for example, although within that you'd probably want to keep the individual templates zipped still since they can uncompress to many megabytes.

Something of concern to me is: what license are the templates under? It's kind of like GitHub Copilot - if I use your template, does my project become GPL, or do you hold copyright over my project? Probably most people wouldn't think of this, and I doubt you were planning to sue anyone 😁 I was coming to look to see if you had a Turbo Assembler template because the ones that came with Borland C++ are themselves not clear on licensing; I don't think anyone who provides example code is ever clear about this stuff in fact, so maybe this is too hard to address "properly"!

Perhaps you could sell this program better if instead of saying stuff like "this program sucks" you gave some examples of what you can do with it, e.g.:

With this software, by selecting some options from a dialog box, you can create: - a new disk image for your emulator of choice […]
Show full quote

With this software, by selecting some options from a dialog box, you can create:
- a new disk image for your emulator of choice (templates for Amiga, Commodore 64, [others] included)
- a new skeleton Turbo C program which uses BGI graphics
- a new skeleton assembler program which compiles as a .COM program using NASM
- many other types of file using the provided templates
- any other type of file if you create a template for it

I think that is true, from the templates I saw?

doshea, I thank you for your input and interest in my program. 😀 Picker02.zip is the Windows version and TMPCR02.zip is the DOS version. The source code is included. You can use my program as you like, and I own no rights to your templates.