Hi everyone,
I'm writing this post in English so that more people can understand it, so that this message can be relayed to the people it might be interesting for. If some people think translating it can help, please do!
I go by the name of Thomas Touhey, a.k.a Cakeisalie5. I'm a French programmer on Planète Casio, and the author of the P7 project, a project around all protocols, file formats and encodings around CASIO calculators, a project that includes libcasio, a C library attempting at implementing those, and the FONTCHARACTER reference, a reference for CASIO's proprietary encoding through their calculator's history.
In March 2019, I learned about a programmer in Japan named Takumako who developed for the fx-5800P. By going through his work, I realized most of what he did, i.e. reverse engineering of the protocol, was already done by a german developer, Simon Lothar, back in the beginning of the 2010s. That event made me realize how much understanding (by reverse engineering or other methods) and programming for CASIO calculators those days feel like
building the Babel tower: each of us do and re-do the same things all over again, in its own community, and although there is some documentation gathered all around the Internet, searching and reading all of it is time-consuming and most people don't have the time to actually do it.
Just think about how many communities there are: Planète Casio, TI-Planet, Casiopeia, the Universal Casio Forum, Code Walrus, Cemetech (there still are a few CASIO enthusiastics there), cnCalc, and probably others I'm not aware of. Scattered around in these communities are many people with their own pieces of knowledge and some common ones, and although some people try to reduce the gaps, such as Critor, a French teacher, who cross-posts most of his research and others' on both TI-Planet and Planète Casio, and sometimes some other communities, or sentaro21, who is the bridge between cnCalc and us, we do not have any international committee or organization with representants of all of these communities.
How many times have you thought “wow, has nobody done this before?” or “hey, I've already done what he has!” when working on tech related to CASIO calculators? Don't you think it's time to define a committee with at least one expert from each community to reduce the amount of efforts and regroup all the knowledge we have? To communicate on our projects and research in a global way, so that we don't do things twice?
Now, let's suppose we want to form an international committee. There are many questions that one might ask:
- Who would be part of it, and who wouldn't?
- What would the criteria be, one person per community or more?
- What communities could be represented in this committee?
- What governance do we want for it?
- Which language(s) shall we use?
- How would we communicate between us? To the rest of the world?
I need your opinion on this. Please share this message with your community, ask them (and yourself!) these questions, find out what you can share and ask yourself what it could bring to you.
We can only win from such a committee. Please spread the word!
Alternative versions:
» “Towards an international committee?” (Universal Casio Forum)
» “Inter-community research effort” (Casiopeia)
Citer : Posté le 29/03/2019 13:07 | #
Now I totally understand what you're describing. For some time I've been focusing on creating my libraries and programs without trying to reverse-engineer too much, because I never really knew whether it was helpful or not. There is documentation, but it's somewhat spread, and the Planète Casio Bible is also here for this.
I quite of like the idea of inter-community effort, especially since forums are somewhat dying these days (Casiopeia doesn't have that much activity, CodeWalrus' been through pretty hard times IIRC, not to mention Planète Casio as well). Also, I'm a student researcher, so obviously this kind of shared effort tempts me a lot.
I'm not sure such a committee (as you call it) would need a deep, organized structure. To answer your questions...
- People from the communities would take part (seems obvious to me).
- I'd say at least one for each community, not more would be needed as long as the designated person has a clear overview of what's going on.
- Anyone wanting to join!
- Is a governance really needed? Inter-community effort could just work on the basis of regular discussions or so. Bring communities closer, all that.
- I think English is the most obvious pick here.
- Round-robin community forums?
Something you don't tackle when you're talking about research is where do we publish the results. Most communities already have some kind of wiki (Casio Universal Wiki, TI-Planet Wiki, the Planète Casio Bible, WikiPrizm, etc). I don't think we can hope to change this too much. But we may be able to link all of these together, moving from one wiki to another as if we were staying on a global one.
Citer : Posté le 29/03/2019 13:17 | #
I'm not sure such a committee (as you call it) would need a deep, organized structure. To answer your questions...
- People from the communities would take part (seems obvious to me).
- I'd say at least one for each community, not more would be needed as long as the designated person has a clear overview of what's going on.
- Anyone wanting to join!
- Is a governance really needed? Inter-community effort could just work on the basis of regular discussions or so. Bring communities closer, all that.
- I think English is the most obvious pick here.
- Round-robin community forums?
Actually, what you're describing feels like the Universal Casio Forum (UCF), and the amount of activity on it seems to be decreasing these days. That's why I'm proposing something different:
- missions with limited time (one year, extendable?), so that the movement is enforced by the system.
- few people so that the committee doesn't feel impersonal, everyone needs to feel implicated and knowing of what's going on in their own community.
- governance means at least one pilot, otherwise the team has higher chances of not working and not concentrated on the efforts.
- no, the language is not obvious. Most chinese don't seem to speak English, so more than one language could be possible (but again, is the role of such a committee to be inclusive?), and that's why I also want their feedback.
- forums can be impersonal, and I'd say that direct messaging can solve some problems (as well as creating others). Again, there's no obvious and multi-cultural answer to that, and governments are , that's why I want some feedback.
Something you don't tackle when you're talking about research is where do we publish the results. Most communities already have some kind of wiki (Casio Universal Wiki, TI-Planet Wiki, the Planète Casio Bible, WikiPrizm, etc). I don't think we can hope to change this too much. But we may be able to link all of these together, moving from one wiki to another as if we were staying on a global one.
That would be one of the problems such a committee would be dedicated to solve.
Ajouté le 29/03/2019 à 13:18 :
Also, I created a post on the UCF to talk about it with the people there.
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Citer : Posté le 29/03/2019 13:26 | #
Interessant
Passé ici il y a peu. ಥ‿ಥ
Jouez à Mario sans arrêt sur votre Casio !
City Heroes
Piano Casio
Micro GIMP
Citer : Posté le 29/03/2019 13:39 | #
Actually, what you're describing feels like the Universal Casio Forum (UCF), and the amount of activity on it seems to be decreasing these days.
Can you please tell me more about the UCF? I'm really not acquainted with them.
This will only work if there are projects inside the communities, I believe. I mean, who would add to their own workload to help with research if no one was initially interested in the results? If we want to present this idea (and I think we should), we probably need to come up with a few practical goals that the effort would help accomplish, such as "put together all the documentation" or "fully reverse-engineer the projector protocol".
I did not say it was obvious, only the most obvious choice, as English is the most widespread language out here. Although you have a point that one language may not be enough.
I'm definite that all activity of this group should be public. And I think holding it on different forums will be a very good way of letting everyone visit the other sites and have a clearer idea of who's there and what they do.
Well, how about we think of a few tracks before starting out?
Citer : Posté le 29/03/2019 13:52 | #
Can you please tell me more about the UCF? I'm really not acquainted with them.
I don't really know the history of the UCF, I just know it's an international forum around CASIO calculators, and less active than Planète Casio. Maybe someone else can answer to this?
This will only work if there are projects inside the communities, I believe. I mean, who would add to their own workload to help with research if no one was initially interested in the results? If we want to present this idea (and I think we should), we probably need to come up with a few practical goals that the effort would help accomplish, such as "put together all the documentation" or "fully reverse-engineer the projector protocol".
I think that would be the role of work groups, such as the ones at IETF including the CSS work group. But that could be between members of the committee, or by everyone in projects decided by the committee (politics!).
I'm definite that all activity of this group should be public. And I think holding it on different forums will be a very good way of letting everyone visit the other sites and have a clearer idea of who's there and what they do.
Although I agree the committee's activity should be public, not everything needs to be, as this can really put the pressure of politics onto the individuals who wouldn't be paid for this.
I'd say that at least, the decision making process and the meetings (if any, I mean, it's not easy to meet when you have that many time zones involved…) should be opened to the public and/or logged. But anyway, that's to the committee, if it ends up existing, to decide…
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Citer : Posté le 29/03/2019 13:59 | #
One last thing: does the term "working group" fit your idea of the "committee"?
Citer : Posté le 29/03/2019 14:04 | #
Well, I don't know about the terms, that's also why I'm asking for feedback. It would be like an organization that manages working groups (WG). In Europe or in the USA, you could call that a NGO (“association” in French), but out of Europe I have no idea how you would call that and what are the structures that they know there. So the idea is also to look at the possibilities and find a way to organize ourselves that suit everyone.
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Citer : Posté le 29/03/2019 15:38 | #
If I remember well, there was a time UCF didn't really like tinkering, especially in the context of fx-Remote.
That's why SimonLothar + cfxm + TeamFX moved to Casiopeia / Omnimaga / cnCalc / Planète Casio for their next achievements.
Since then, the activity on UCF has decreased so much that the administrator who made them leave doesn't seem to mind anymore about what's happening.
Citer : Posté le 29/03/2019 21:10 | #
I try a french translate of the main post
Salut tous le monde,
J'écris ce post en Anglais, ainsi plus de personnes pourront le comprendre. Ce message pourra être relayé par les personnes intéressées. Si quelqu'un pouvait traduire ça ce serait cool, ça pourra aider à comprendre !
Je commence mon nom : Thomas Touhey, a.k.a Cakeisalai5. Je suis un programmeur Français membre de la communauté Planète Casio. Je suis l'auteur du projet P7 qui touche les protocoles en général, les formats de fichiers et l'encodement sur les calculatrice CASIO. Ce projet inclus libcasio, une librairie de fonction en C qui permet d’implémenter ces fonctions ainsi que FONTCHARACTER qui sert à créer des fichiers de sauvegarde externe.
En Mars 2018, j’ai appris qu’un programmeur Japonais du nom de Takumako avait développé un protocole de retro-engineering pour les Fx-5800P. Or ce même protocole avait déjà été fait en 2010 par un dévelopeur Allemand : Simon Lothar.
Cette anecdote m’a fait réalisé à quel point les différentes communautés ne communiquent pas assez entres-elles : on fait et re-fait les même choses alors qu’elles ont déjà été faites dans d’autre communautés. D’où l’idée du projet Tour de Babel, qui vise une meilleure communication inter-communauté ainsi qu’un partage des projets et données. De plus, une mise en commun de nos compétences et de nos recherches permet de gagner du temps : tous serait au même endroit. Or plusieurs personnes n’ont pas le temps d’éplucher toutes les communautés…
Juste pensez au nombre de communautés centrées sur les calculatrices : Planète Casio, TI-Planet, Casiopeia, the Universal Casio Forum, Code Walrus, Cemetech, cnCalc,
et sans doute d’autres encore. bien que certaines personnes essaient de réduire les écarts comme Critor entre TI-Planet et Planète Casio ou encore Sentaro21 entre cnCalc et Planète Casio. Il n’y a pas de comité international avec des représentant de toutes ces communautés.
Combien de fois vous vous êtes dit : « Wow, personne n’as fait ça avant ? » ou « Hey, j’ai déjà fait ce qu’il a fait ! » lorsque vous travaillez sur vos machines Casio ? Vous ne pensez pas qu’il est temps de définir un comité d’expert qui regroupe toutes les communautés ? Et qui permettrait une centralisation de toutes nos connaissances, qui permettrait de réduire les distances que nous avons les uns avec les autres ? Qui permettrai de communiquer sur nos projets, nos recherches ? Le tout dans un but global ?
Maintenant, supposons que nous voulons aller dans ce sens et que nous voulons former un comité international, il y a plusieurs questions qui se posent :
- Qui ferait partit de ce comité ?
- Quels sont les critères sur lesquels une communauté peut entrer dans ce comité, et combien de personne(s) par communauté?
- Combien de communautés devrait être représentées ?
- Qui chapeaute les efforts ?
- Dans quelles langues on échange ?
- Avec qui voulons nous communiquer ? Le reste du monde ?
J’ai besoin de votre opinion la dessus. S’il vous plait, partager ce message avec votre communauté, demandez- leurs, demandez à vous même ! Ces questions, sont ouvertes, demandez vous ce que vous pouvez partager, ce que cet échange pourrait vous apporter.
Nous ne pouvons que y gagner, tous. Partagez ce message !
There is a strong message, I hope it can develop in a future !
I think all administrators of each community must be present. Maybe the number of person per community can be different per community
A very good idea !
J'ai ajouté un post-it au topic
Citer : Posté le 30/03/2019 08:11 | #
I think that is great.
Unfortunately in Japan today there is no such thing as the community of the graphing calculator.
There only offer information individually.
I will check international calculator sites to be hit by web search if there is something unknown.
If I have a lot of time to search, I can get most of the information I need,
However,
There are some that did not notice like the fx-5800P protocol.
I think it is very useful if it is in one place or can be referenced.
Currently, I think the most active on CASIO's calculator site is Planet-Casio.
I would like to cooperate as much as I can.
Overclocking utilitaire Ftune/Ptune2/Ptune3 est également disponible.
Si vous avez des questions ou un rapport de bogue, n'hésitez pas à me le faire savoir.
Citer : Posté le 30/03/2019 10:19 | #
Unfortunately in Japan today there is no such thing as the community of the graphing calculator.
There only offer information individually.
I will check international calculator sites to be hit by web search if there is something unknown.
If I have a lot of time to search, I can get most of the information I need,
However,
There are some that did not notice like the fx-5800P protocol.
I think it is very useful if it is in one place or can be referenced.
Do you think there is a possibility to make one and to ask each developer to join it, in order to enable developers there to communicate with each other? That would be really great, plus you're in the country CASIO is born and active in! You could seek help from other people in Japan (which will know better the needs of people there than us, I think), or from us on the technical side
Currently, I think the most active on CASIO's calculator site is Planet-Casio.
I would like to cooperate as much as I can.
And I'll be glad to work with you if we manage to form such an organization
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Citer : Posté le 30/03/2019 10:23 | #
Cake, would you be interested in being a representative of Planète Casio in this group? You're the one of us who knows the other communities the best, and you're clearly up to the task technically speaking.
Citer : Posté le 30/03/2019 10:29 | #
Cake, would you be interested in being a representative of Planète Casio in this group? You're the one of us who knows the other communities the best, and you're clearly up to the task technically speaking.
As a matter of fact, yes. First of all, I know that technically, it will be really interesting, but what interests me more about this project is the political and social side of it: we have a passion and could share it with people abroad, even on the other side of the world!
My goal at the beginning at least is to create the organization, make its base (what will be its legal form? its governance mode? etc) and allow it to last as soon as possible, not just throw ourselves in the technical side and forget to make it last. If we manage to do this, just imagine the possibilities that we bring closer to being realized: we could organize an event uniting CASIO calculators enthusiastics around the world! Not counting the technical projects which will be a huge help for all CASIO calculators enthusiastics worldwide
Ajouté le 30/03/2019 à 12:41 :
As discussed on the shoutbox (the instant messaging place on Planète Casio) with @critor, I was thinking more of a “hacking” community which would think more about community interests and curiosity than about CASIO's commercial interests, as opposed to the “user” community which — as you said — is going really well in France thanks to the Graph 35+E II calculator.
Also, the idea is not to create yet another community (that would be a repeat of UCF's history, I think, and that's not what I'm aiming for), it would be to make a federation which goal is to allow communities to communicate, and so with two main means:
- a direct canal (instant messaging, mailing-lists, both, others…) for political decisions mainly (movement organization, or a more global communication on who is doing what where), with derivatives for more restricted Working Groups (WG).
- a stable canal (wiki) where all the documentation produced by Working Groups could be presented on.
Ajouté le 31/03/2019 à 22:38 :
Just received a message on the UCF by 2072 (admin, on CASIO calculators since 2002 on graph100.com):
Hi,
Casiocalc.org is no longer developed, I'm just keeping it online because it is still useful to many people according to Google Analytics and because Google Adsense is paying for the hosting fees.
There are no active admins nor moderators left. This website is more a live archive than anything else right now...
So it would be difficult to find a representative for this community.
I'll probably turn this website into a read-only archive at some point if I find a proper way to do it.
You're idea is a good one. You should pursue it if you feel that it's a path with a heart, but just make it so that you're not mandatory as a person to make it work or it will end up like this website...
Guess that's too late for the UCF then… we're making a contact list with Critor currently, to see who would be interested and what community projects we can still make.
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Citer : Posté le 07/04/2019 19:38 | #
Pas un succès terrible sur les autres forums tout ça. Cake, si on relançait un peu les fils ?
Citer : Posté le 07/04/2019 19:44 | #
Je regarde ça bientôt, j'ai pas mal de tâches sur mes services perso ainsi que de projets d'étude, puis je vois la liste de contacts qu'on a pour decider du plan d'action à entreprendre.
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Citer : Posté le 08/04/2019 20:02 | #
Je pense que tu pourrais procéder comme ça : mettre d'abord toutes les personnes imminentes de chaque communauté dedans.