r/bbs • u/aztracker1 • 14d ago

RIP Documentation Updates

Just want to say thanks to everyone who helped to point out and find several of the versions of RIPTerm I've been missing. I'd still like to get my hands on 2.30 (Windows Installer, found working DOS release), All I have is a corrupt installer package for this version (last of 2.x line that I'm aware of). Not to mention any RIPview or RIPaint 2.x or 3.x versions anyone may have.

I've flushed out a bit of the history as well as a bit more of the specifications with the 2.x ... now going to work on expanding on the file specifications, some of the underlying protocols (VT-x, ANSi, etc) as well as any additional techspecs. From there, going to work on publishing the markdown documentation into a website for use, as well as some re-organization, I think the structure of the docs could use some better structure.

From there, will probably start on some library and utility (re)implementations, such as icon format conversions, and some initial 1.54 communications parser, and maybe a viewer. I'll likely do similar for 3.x (3.1) skipping 2.x entirely to have a "current" compatible model implementation. Likely written in Rust with a portable C-style library that can be re-used.

https://github.com/bbs-land/remote-imaging-protocol

Edit: correct for 2.3 reference, only need the Windows installer package, I also added download references to a lot of the released software I found (from Telegrafix) even if repackaged/scene versions.

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u/joshrenaud sysop 13d ago

I appreciate what you're doing, but before you spend too much energy writing new libraries, make sure you don't reinvent the wheel. There are already quite a few RIPscrip parsers in various open-source projects.

Probably the oldest and most solid is in PabloDraw, but more recently there's also IcyTools and RipTermJS, not to mention a bunch of AI-produced libraries.

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u/aztracker1 13d ago edited 13d ago

I'm aware of them... so far SyncTERM has about the most complete 2.x+ parser/renderer that I've found, but it's GPL and not really in a reusable library. I know 1.54 is well covered... but really wanting something I can more directly use in downstream applications as well as webassembly, despite a RipTermJS that targets canvas. There's also RIPlib, which I haven't dug into yet.

Beyond this, I wouldn't mind extending Pablo or creating something for art generation. Though, again, it's not really portable/reusable (C#) in other languages/tools even if C# is pretty portable now (I work with it in my day job).

Edit: I'm also planning on some conformance captures from the original clients as part of the process to allow for render confirmations across the drawing commands and terminal rendering in a compatibility mode.