On 4/24/2013 12:18 AM, mdj wrote:
By contrast, the Apple IIGS requires hundreds of dollars of investment to legally obtain the necessary materials. It's almost a surprise to me that anyone is bothering to do it anymore. Even though we may never be able to free the compilers, it does seem a good time to make a choice. I would hope that that choice once made would become precipitous, but even if it didn't, we would still be in a far better situation than the current one, which is quite obviously causing angst and division in a community that has been on a course towards more unity. Let it happen guys! Matt
Its one reason why I and likely many others have never attempted Apple IIgs programming. Getting into the game is just too expensive. I have a copy of "Programming the Apple IIgs in Assembly Language", but its not much use without development tools and reference manuals. Even Classic MacOS doesn't suffer from this problem. The documentation and tools are out there for them. The 8-bit Apple II,C64,Amiga, etc. has a vibrant programming community because the cost of entry is low.
Speaking of reference manuals. There are some that aren't even available from Syndicomm that I would like to get a hold of that are unobtainium, like the Image Writer LQ Technical Reference.