Yeah, this is going to be great. Under 50 kb for an entire modern OS worth of functionality. I was anticipating a bigger increase but all the optimization I am seeing is very good news. The filesystem appvar is way more dynamic now so that's a win, and with no extra folders/files you're actually making gains on storage efficiency in the beta. I'm conflicted on the wallpapers, high resolution plus good palette codes are something I really wanted to see even after just discovering Vysion 1, but then I have to think about storage... You should be able to get a 320x240 down a long way(<20kb) with zx7, and the palette is like 512 bytes or so, but then you really have to pick and chose wallpapers because you can't just keep a few on-calculator anymore. Everything is still a definite net gain just something to keep in mind. Btw my name is greenturtle5-3-7 not 5-3-6 check your quote, that was painful for me to read.

What is a hook appear?

Thanks, greenturtle537! And keep in mind that ROMs for TI-Boy CE are often several full 64k appvars (and that larger games with many maps or high-resolution graphics are also very large), so storage space is all relative. You shouldn't have a problem keeping a decent number of wallpapers (maybe 10 or so) on the calculator in any case. And I've edited my previous post to fix the issue regarding your username.


The hook appvar simply contains some code that will be executed when certain conditions are met within the OS--the only currently implemented one is the start hook, which will execute the shell when the key combination [on]+[prgm] is pressed.

What language would it be written in? It sounds useful to mess with the OS. Also, I didn’t know about the [on] shortcut, very useful.

This would be written in assembly (the majority of the shell is in C, with some small assembly snippets). And it's good to hear that you think the shortcut would be useful, I find it much more convenient than scrolling through the program menu to find the shell.

Out of curiosity, how would one go about getting into the closed.. alpha? beta? whatever it is now?

You would probably go into the GitHub and request to be a beta tester. At least I think we're on beta now.

We're still in the closed alpha/pre-alpha stage for the time being, and I've been running the tests in my Discord server for small groups of people. I would definitely be open to having some kind of open/semi-open beta once the program is a little more developed, though.

I've been off Discord for a few weeks now and will be off it for the foreseeable future, so don't expect any new tests in the imminent future (though development continues).

Quick question, can I use Vysion on 5.6? I've used aRTIFICE and Cesium in the past, so it might be different. Also, what's this talk of Vysion 2? Is it more updated?
Sorry for being so out of the loop lol

As both VYSION and VYSION 2 are assembly programs, they should work fine using arTIfiCE. It's possibly worth noting that I've heard of an issue with the program clearing AsmHook's hook, which I'll need to resolve at some point.

VYSION 2 is a complete rewrite of VYSION, with vastly improved user experience and functionality. It runs on OPTIX 3, which is a complete rewrite of OPTIX 2 (which powered VYSION) and allows for an entirely new GUI, movable/resizable windows, more efficient space usage, and a lot of hacky tricks with custom GUI elements. VYSION 2 also has a much faster and more space efficient filesystem, higher-definition wallpapers, improved customization, icon packs, hooks, and faster start time, and probably a lot more things that I'm forgetting.

0.1.18

Introduction
It has, once again, been a ludicrously long amount of time since the last update. There have been a ton of new features added since the last one (some of which no longer work as they did originally due to restructuring and reworking of things), so let's get right to it! Please note that many of these screenshots are from older versions of the shell.

Icon packs and color themes
This is one that I thought people would be particularly excited about, as it allows the look and feel of the shell to be completely changed even more so later.... Coming along with the icon packs are color themes, which allow the user to create and apply custom color themes extremely easily, or even to save them to appvars.


Window position saving
That's right, windows stay open when they're supposed to now.


New settings menu
I felt that the old start menu, with its six major categories, didn't allow enough organization and mostly resulted in massive lists of options, so I've rewritten it. Everything is now organized into nice nested menus like on many major operating systems, which should make it much easier to find what you're looking for.


Redesigned wallpaper picker
The wallpaper picker has been redesigned, now taking up less of the screen and adding a search box.


Improved file explorer
The file explorer, at long last, now has a back button, as well as some text that indicates the current directory. Along with this comes with the abilities to (un)lock, (un)hide, and (un)archive files through an all-new properties menu.


Translucency
This was a fun one--thanks to some slick new rectangle drawing tricks, things can now be translucent, using a similar technique to Michael2_3B's Isometric Minecraft or Windows 9x.


Testing
I'm now rolling out a phase of testing for the general public, through my Discord server as per usual. I've recently been reworking a lot of the inner workings of the shell, so this is the last stable-ish build and the last testing phase for a while, most likely. Keep in mind all of the usual warnings and notices: it'll likely reset your calc, it's still an "experimental" build, and so on. Use it at your own risk.

Conclusion
That's all for now, but as always, feel free to request features, discuss the pre-release, or ask questions here. I'll try to be better about posting updates in the future as well.

Changelog
[added] desktop file menu
[added] icon pack support
[added] open windows now save when running a program
[added] icon indicating the hovered-over option in the start menu
[added] windows can be minimized through title bar menu
[added] basic properties menu
[added] ability to lock/unlock files
[added] ability to hide/unhide files
[added] ability to archive/unarchive files
[added] ability to make start menu, taskbar, and window title bars translucent
[added] drop-down menus
[added] back button function for file explorer
[added] generic tree functions
[added] basic nesting structure for settings menu
[added] ability to toggle OS lowercase on or off
[added] pass_self option to button click args
[added] basic welcome message when starting shell for first time
[added] basic panel structure
[improved] icon packs/color themes selectable in new settings me
[improved] check boxes in settings menu now work
[improved] simplified creation process for windows
[improved] current directory text in file explorers
[improved] menu drawing
[improved] windows can now be closed with [clear]
[improved] added file name to properties menu
[improved] wallpaper picker design
[improved] "No files..." option no longer displays in desktop file menu files nor folders are displayed
[improved] rectangle drawing techniques (allowing transparency)
[improved] click action behaviors
[fixed] incorrect scrolbar placement with multiple menu columns
[fixed] potential incorrect program run when clicking on "No files..."
[fixed] incorrect program run when clicking empty file menu space
[fixed] further icon transparency issues
[fixed] windows do not close properly
[fixed] welcome message makes all other elements disappear
[fixed] offsets for centering could not work for very large or small values
[fixed] folder indices stored incorrectly
[fixed] potential crash on filesystem load
[fixed] false [enter] input could be registered (corruption?)
[fixed] slow program info fetching for TI-Basic programs with icons
[fixed] last key pressed could be registered in a run TI-Basic program
[fixed] filesystem loading could break with insufficient RAM
[fixed] potential reset when closing windows through the GUI

Xenon does what Vysion't.


Just kidding, this is a great update and I can't wait to try the custom themes feature.

Thanks! Much more interesting things to come in that department in later updates, so stay tuned.

In other news, the test build is now available! It's accessible on my Discord server, which is linked above.

the fact that a literal OS on the TI looks this good and is under 50KB... ._.


Good job

It's a shell, not an OS. You still need TI-OS to be able to use it, since it uses a lot of TI-OS functions.

Yep, that. I do think that Johnny meant more that it has a lot of the functionality of what we'd consider to be a typical OS--your average Windows, Linux, or MacOS distribution--in terms of the desktop environment and how the windowing system actually works.

And compressed, yes it is under 50 kB, which I'm pretty happy about. It's likely to keep getting larger for a while, though.

This is what GrannySmithOS will always attempt to become, but never quite reach! LOL. Man, this is unholy good. I love the background changing option and the amount of settings. It's a really well built program that makes me forget that I'm even on a calculator.

Thanks for the support! I've spent a lot of time on both the background changing and the new settings menu, so it's good to know that was worth it. And just wait until the next update, I've got some really cool stuff coming.

Also, remember that this has been a nearly 2-year long process already, there's no way you could have made an equivalent shell in the time you've been working on GrannySmithOS. Just keep at it and everything will come together eventually.

Hey is there any new updates? Also, is vysion 2 developed enough to be released or is it already out im kind of a noob with this

Yes, I've been working on this quite a lot recently, but it's not in a state where I'm ready to make another update post yet. Don't worry, the next one will be a pretty exciting one.

And no, it's nowhere near being ready for release. However, if you do want to test out an older, somewhat stable version of it, you can get that on my Discord server.

I could theoretically have released a version of this already, if I really felt like it, as most of the basic functionality is already implemented. However, I want to make sure that the first release is as good as I can reasonably make it, and has all of the extra features and functionality that I've been talking about for years (!) now. So, I'm going to take my time to ensure that all of you can have my absolute best work. I'd much rather release a hyper-polished program that takes much more time to release than a buggy, unfinished one that mostly works (that's what the beta program is for).

Stay tuned for more updates sometime!