Author: Anthony Kozar

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A multiplatform Bol Processor

  

Bol Processor 2.9.8 (Mac ver­sion) had been around for eight years and required very few bug fix­es. However, it had to be com­plete­ly rebuilt to work with MacOS 10.15 (Catalina) and future ver­sions. The high­est sys­tem ver­sion sup­port­ing BP 2.9.8 was MacOS 10.14 (Mojave).

The graph­i­cal inter­face was com­plete­ly redesigned for this pur­pose. We decid­ed to devel­op a con­sole serv­er appli­ca­tion, which receives instruc­tions via com­mand lines. The con­sole suc­cess­ful­ly com­piled on many sys­tems includ­ing MacOS, Linux and Windows with 64-bit Intel processors.

This new appli­ca­tion (BP3) is linked to a graph­i­cal user inter­face pro­grammed in PHP. This requires a web serv­er on which to run on (MAMP or XAMPP) but allows any­one with a web brows­er to try out BP3 with­out installing any­thing (fol­low this link).

We are now plan­ning to cre­ate a stand­alone ver­sion of BP3 that will run in MacOS, Windows and Linux envi­ron­ments. This step is with­in our reach using the PHP Desktop plat­form. Versions in MacOS and Windows are up and run­ning, but there are still a few issues that need to be resolved to reach the state of a distribution.

toy train

➡ We invite soft­ware design­ers to join the team and con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of the core appli­ca­tion and its client appli­ca­tions. Please join the BP open dis­cus­sion forum and/or the BP devel­op­ers list to stay in touch with the progress of the work and to dis­cuss relat­ed musi­cal or theoretical/technical issues.

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Bol Processor 2.9.8 released

The lat­est sta­ble ver­sion of Bol Processor has been released! This ver­sion pri­mar­i­ly fix­es the prob­lem that pre­vent­ed graph­i­cal scores from dis­play­ing in the Graphics win­dow on Intel Macs. BP 2.9.8 runs on Intel or PowerPC Macs with Mac OS X 10.4 or lat­er. Read the release notes or down­load it from Sourceforge. For an intro­duc­tion to the capa­bil­i­ties of BP2, please see Bol Processor intro­duc­tion. For help using this release, see the help forum. For gen­er­al dis­cus­sion of BP2, check out the BP forum.

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Bol Processor Universal Binary released

Bol Processor 2.9.7 beta has been released! This ver­sion of BP2 is a "Universal Binary" that will run native­ly on all Mac OS X com­put­ers, PowerPC or Intel-based. Several bugs have been fixed as well. This update makes it much eas­i­er for oth­er devel­op­ers to con­tribute to the project since we are now build­ing BP2 with Apple's free Xcode tools. Read the release notes or down­load it from Sourceforge. For an intro­duc­tion to the capa­bil­i­ties of BP2, please see Bol Processor intro­duc­tion. For help using this release, see the help forum. For gen­er­al dis­cus­sion of BP2, check out the BP forum.

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Bol Processor Universal Binary in progress

We have begun the process of cre­at­ing a Universal Binary of BP2 so that the pro­gram will run native­ly on all Macintosh com­put­ers, PowerPC or Intel-based. Bol Processor will then run at full speed on all sup­port­ed machines and we will be able to take advan­tage of new­er fea­tures of OS X. As part of this process, we are switch­ing to build­ing BP2 with Apple's free Xcode tools instead of Metrowerks CodeWarrior. This should make it much eas­i­er for oth­er devel­op­ers to con­tribute to the project. If you are inter­est­ed in help­ing with devel­op­ment or test­ing, please con­tact us on the BP devel­op­ment mail­ing list. More infor­ma­tion is avail­able in the forums.

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Bol Processor 2.9.6 released

Bol Processor 2.9.6 has been released! This is the first sta­ble release of BP2 for Mac OS X. BP 2.9.6 also runs on Mac OS 7-9. All users are encour­aged to upgrade as there have been many improve­ments. Download it on Sourceforge. For an intro­duc­tion to the capa­bil­i­ties of BP2, please see Bol Processor intro­duc­tion. For help using this release, see the help forum. For gen­er­al dis­cus­sion of BP2, check out the BP forum.

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Academic presentations

Bernard will soon be pre­sent­ing aspects of Bol Processor in sev­er­al aca­d­e­m­ic venues:

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Beta release for Mac OS X!

Today is the first anniver­sary of the Bol Processor open source project. So, as a present to all of you, Bernard and I are very hap­py to make avail­able the first pub­lic beta of BP2 run­ning on Mac OS X! Download it on Sourceforge. Your feed­back is great­ly appre­ci­at­ed! For help using this release, see the help forum.

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First OS X launch!

In just three and a half weeks of devot­ed work, we have man­aged to final­ly get Bol Processor BP2 to launch and run on OS X! As you can see from the screen­shots, there are many cos­met­ic issues to resolve. And the Open, Save, and Print com­mands do not work, nor is there any real-time MIDI at this point. But it is pos­si­ble to com­pile gram­mars and pro­duce out­put in the Data win­dow. So, BP2 on OS X is coming!

(2012) For up-to-date screen­shots, see the main project page.

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Bol Processor 2.9.5 released.

Bol Processor 2.9.5 has been released! This is the follow-up to the pre­vi­ous beta release and we are assum­ing that this release is sta­ble enough to replace the pre­vi­ous sta­ble ver­sion of BP2 2.9.3. Download it on Sourceforge. For an intro­duc­tion to the capa­bil­i­ties of BP2, please see Bol Processor intro­duc­tion. For help using this release, see the help forum. For gen­er­al dis­cus­sion of BP2, check out the BP forum.

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Work on OS X version of BP2 commences.

Carbon port­ing of Bol Processor BP2 has begun. Once fin­ished, BP2 will run on Mac OS X and pos­si­bly will still run on Mac OS 8/9 too. We are very focused on get­ting this done and have esti­mat­ed that the first OS X beta will be func­tion­al in about three months! To mon­i­tor our progress, check out the devel­op­er list archives. To be noti­fied when an OS X beta is released, join the announce­ment mail­ing list.