[CDG5] Random questions

[Elliot Nunn]

Oops -- right you are!

Re RetDec, Max, any thoughts? We could really use a high-throughput
PEF-hacking workflow.

> On 30 Nov 2018, at 2:17 am, Jason Duerstock <jason.duerstock at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I believe the 'dcmp' resources were reimplemented as 'ncmp' for PPC code.
> 
> I will try to take a stab at the Donn and Greggy stuff in the next week or so.
> 
> Also, if you haven't seen it: https://github.com/avast-tl/retdec
> 
> It's not really any use on the m68k code, but it does work against
> PPC.  You have to trim out the raw bits from the PEF file you want to
> process though.
> 
> Jason
> On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 7:01 PM Elliot Nunn <elliotnunn at fastmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> If you see any documentation promising big changes in "Mac OS 8", think
>> Copland. Of course that was cancelled, and some of its high-level
>> improvements got backported to a System 7-based Mac OS 8 and 9.
>> 
>> I note that 'dcmp' 0, 1 and 2 did not change from 7 to 9, but that a
>> 'dcmp' 3 was also added. (None of these resources contains any PowerPC
>> code.) Yes, please implement these in Python! I will get them into
>> macresources. Re-compression would be even better!
>> 
>>> On 28 Nov 2018, at 10:44 pm, Jason Duerstock <jason.duerstock at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I haven't found a whole lot about resource compression so far, but
>>> there is this:
>>> 
>>> http://preserve.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.09/09.01/ResCompression/index.html
>>> 
>>> Surprisingly, there is also this tidbit from:
>>> http://preserve.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.12/12.08/OS8Checklist/index.html
>>> 
>>> "9. Don’t use compressed resources. Resources which are decompressed
>>> with the undocumented “dcmp” mechanism in System 7 will not be
>>> compatible with Mac OS 8. Resources which are compressed with other
>>> third-party mechanisms such as Application VISE will continue to
>>> work."
>>> 
>>> Considering they're still being used in OS 9, I don't know what to
>>> think of that other than "huh?".
>>> 
>>> The following files detail the "Donn" and "Greggy" codecs:
>>> 
>>> https://github.com/elliotnunn/CubeE/blob/master/Patches/GreggyBitsDefProc.a
>>> https://github.com/elliotnunn/CubeE/blob/master/Patches/DeCompressDefProc.a
>>> 
>>> I can try to make a Python decompress for the above if you want.
>>> 
>>> Jason
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 10:00 PM Elliot Nunn <elliotnunn at fastmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 1. The Classic file seems to act as a System Enabler ("Gibbly").
>>>> 
>>>> 2. Hadn't seen that new Lua port -- very cool! I wonder if MPW could
>>>>  eventually be persuaded to run binary Tools reentrantly. It would
>>>>  obviate a lot of MPW Shell hackery.
>>>> 
>>>>  Sadly I had trouble ever getting ToolDaemon to work. My workaround
>>>>  for a while was to SSH into a Tiger machine and send an Apple Event
>>>>  to ToolServer from there.
>>>> 
>>>> 3. I have briefly looked into the on-disk encoding of compressed
>>>>  resources, in order to prevent
>>>>  [SimpleDeRez](https://pypi.org/project/macresources/) from choking on
>>>>  them. The scheme seems to rely on executable resources in the same
>>>>  file, and I'm naturally not keen to emulate those. But if you have
>>>>  some docs on the common format(s), then I am all ears!
>>>> 
>>>>  Bin-patching compressed resources for BuildCubeE has been
>>>>  frustrating. So far I have just opened them in ResEdit for
>>>>  decompression.
>>>> 
>>>>> On 28 Nov 2018, at 12:57 am, Jason Duerstock <jason.duerstock at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 1) Does anyone know how things get loaded from the "Classic" file in
>>>>> the System Folder?  Does this happen under native 9.x, or only under
>>>>> OS X?
>>>>> 
>>>>> 2) If you haven't seen these before:
>>>>> https://github.com/SolraBizna/MacLua5.3
>>>>> https://github.com/fblondiau/ToolDaemon
>>>>> http://www.kallisys.com/files/mac/toolserver(1)-1.2.dmg
>>>>> 
>>>>> 3) Has anyone looked into compressed resources and the associate
>>>>> 'dcmp' and 'ncmp' resources?  I'm wondering if it would be handy to
>>>>> have an lz4 resourcecompressor/decompressor.  Or if there would be
>>>>> another lossless codec that would be more appropriate.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> 
>>>>> Jason
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> cdg5 mailing list
>>>>> cdg5 at ucc.asn.au
>>>>> https://lists.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/cdg5
>>>> 
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