So you want to program your Newton Messagepad, huh? Makes sense...I'm certain that you love your Newton and what better way to show it than by writing some pseudo-useless code for it? Well then, I say welcome to your first step into the world of tomorrow, or more rightly the world of yesterday, by learning Newtonscript, the language that makes our beloved Original Green Tablet run. Newtonscript is a high level, object-oriented proto-language that was developed by Apple for exclusive use as the backbone of the Newton OS. Essentially, all of the adjectives used in the previous sentence mean that Newtonscript is compact, fast, and incredibly powerful on a "limited" machine. Though the Newton Messagepad does have its known limitations, it can still compete with any PDA on the market today. The steps we are taking here will assume you have some previous programming knowledge. I won't guide you through the basics of programming, but I will move at a pace that should make it easy to follow along.

The backbone of Newton development (no matter what system you are using, Mac or PC) is the Newton Toolkit. This must be installed to begin the Newtonscript development process. Newton Toolkit (also known as NTK) is the professional software development kit once sold by Apple for several thousand dollars, but is now found free on the internet. If you already use a Newton on a regular basis, then you probably have visited UNNA.org numerous times. If not, the Newton Toolkit can be downloaded at UNNA.org under the development section.

Every new program starts off as a blank project. To start a new project select Project from the menu bar at the top and then New Project... from the drop down menu. If we were about to begin again on a previous project then you would select the option, Open Project . . .

Once you have selected New Project . . . A file browser window appears. Select a location on your computer and name this new project, Hello World.NTK. A project file contains all the different the parts of our program, from the actual source code to the layout files, as well as any graphics or sounds that will be called during the execution of the program.

For the first step of making a Layout for your Newtonscript program choose protoApp from the drop down list (protoApp is highlighted in red). The proto protoApp contains all the basic tools that a Newtonscript program would require; status bar, title, close box, and info button; protoApp is based on the clView class, with two child views, protoTitle and protoStatus.

Once you’ve selected protoApp, your cursor changes from a selection tool to a drawing tool. You can now draw out your selected view in your new Layout. Create a protoApp view that almost fills the screen of your layout as shown in the picture below. The protoApp view is the basis for most simple Newtonscript programs, it contains a title, a close box, a status bar as well as a single line border and rounded corners. NTK has a built in preview function so you can check the progress of your program, Ctrl + Y will switch from Layout mode to Preview mode and vise versa. The preview won’t always show your layout correctly and the final layout should be checked by downloading your project to your Newton.

Once you have drawn out your Base view (each program has only one Base view, and every other view must be contained within the Base view) in the layout screen we will adjust the Template Info to name it. Once we have named a view we can reference it and all the views under it that are declared to it. You can access template info by first selecting the view from your layout and then clicking Layout menu>Template Info, or by selecting the view from your layout and then pressing Ctrl + I. The window that pops up allows you to name the view as well as declare your view to another view, allowing for direct access to the view.

Once you have opened the Template Info for your base view, as shown in the picture below, name it Main. This protoApp, now called main, will be your base view, each layout has one—and only one—base view, this view holds all your other views and a great deal of your programming code.

The windows show a layout with the Template Info box open, and once the view has been named the layout reflects the changes that have been made, appearing as Main <protoApp>.

Step 8

Once you have named your layout it is then time to start adding the views that make it a Newtonscript program. For the tutorial project we are working on we will create a program with a text button that makes “Hello World” appear on the Newton’s screen. The views that you place in your base view can affect any views that are declared to it or follow the rules of Newtonscript inheritance. I’m working on a separate tutorial to discuss the basics of Newtonscript as well as having a short description of the built-in Views that are provided with NS, until then, inheritance works up the chain, a simple example would be asking your parents, not your children for money. It goes up before going down.

The first view that we will add to our base view Main is, protoStaticText. Go ahead and select this proto from the drop down list. This view is a simple view that does not allow it to be clicked, has no border and displays text, which can be chosen at compile time and changed during run time. Select protoStaticText and draw a view in the Main view roughly 1/3 the height and nearly the entire width of the base view. Once you have drawn out the protoStaticText change it’s Template Properties so it is named textBox, and is declared to the Main view.

Step 9

At this point let’s save both the project and the layout. Select Save All from the File menu (or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + M). This will save the layouts, text files and protos in the current project, prompting you for a save name if one is needed. When the save dialog appears, save the layout as HelloWorld in the same directory as the project file. Once you have named the layout, the title bar changes to reflect the name that it was saved as.

Once you have saved the layout, we must then add it to the project file. Choose Add File from the Project menu, then choose the layout HelloWorld.lyt in the open box that appears. The project file will hold all the required files by our program including layouts, install-scripts, remove-scripts, constants' definitions, and user-created protos. All of the different files added to the project are shown in the project window which contains information about each file including name, file type (text, layout, etc.), size, modification date, and path name of the file.

Step 10

At this point you would be able to build your project and run it on your Newton, but, It would be the most boring program ever, it would do nothing, just sit there waiting to be closed. But, it is a program, and for some of you, it would be your first.

Our next step will be to change the attributes, methods, and values of a proto, in our case, the protoStaticText. To change these values double-click the protoStaticText to bring up the Browser window. The browser window will show not only the proto that was double-clicked but also all the protos that are placed under it as well

Step 11

Now that we have the Browser window open we are going to begin changing the values of our program. At this point we are going to change just a few basic values, let’s double-click our protoStaticText to open a browser window. To begin with the only attributes that are shown are _proto (which is the proto that you are editing, allowing you to change one proto to another), text (allowing you to set the text shown during compile time), and viewBounds (which are the coordinates of the proto in regards to the base view (which would be our Main protoApp). The three kinds of values that a could have are Specific (which would include text for a protoStaticText, or icon for a protoPictureButton), Methods (determine actions from user interaction, a good example would be the programs actions when the proto is highlighted, or if an attempt to draw on the proto is made), and finally Attributes (which cover the way the proto appears while the program is running). Let’s select the text slot, once the text slot has been highlighted the bottom half of the Browser opens up showing what can be edited on the current slot. Let’s change the text slot from “Static Text” to “Hello who?”.

Step 12

Now that we have changed the protoStaticText, let’s create a protoTextButton. Choose protoTextButton from the drop down listing in NTK. Draw a box underneath the protoStaticText roughly one half the width of the text box. Once you have created the protoTextButton change the Template Info (alt + I) and name the protoTextButton “changeText”. Also, declare the newly named button, changeText, to Main.

Go ahead and open the Browser window by double-clicking changeText <protoTextButton>. Once the window is open select the text slot and change from “Button” to “Hello to . . . “. In the browser window you will notice a new slot that was unavailable to Text <protoStaticText>, buttonClickScript. This slot holds the code that is executed when the button is clicked. Select the buttonClickScript slot in the browser, the bottom window shows the code that is executed, the code is in the form of a function. The code that's executed when the button is pressed is found between the begin . . . end. The code that will be executed when the button is pressed will change our aTextBox <protoStaticText> from Hello Who? to Hello World. The code that we will use to accomplish this is SetValue, SetValue allows us to change the value of a slot during run-time of your application.

Add the following code to protoTextButton > buttonClickScript. SetValue(TextBox,’text,”Hello World”). Let’s quickly go over the semantics of the SetValue statement. SetValue begins the statement, followed by an open parenthesis which will enclose the particulars of the SetValue statement. Text is the name given to the proto that we are going to change; aTextBox is the name given to the protoStaticText, ‘text refers to the slot of that we are changing, in protoStaticText we are changing the text slot; and the last part is the value that the slot is being changed to, "Hello World" will be the new value of the text slot in the protoStaticText.

And “Hello World” is the value that the text slot of aTextBox <protoStaticText> is going to be changed to. SetValue can be used to change most every part of a slot in your Newton program (change the icon of a protoPictureButton, the font weight or size, etc.). Once the program has been compiled and run, when the button is pressed aTextBox will change from “Hello who?” to “Hello World”.

Step 13

Now that we have a full Newton project, let’s connect the Inspector to the Newton. The Inspector is a program that connects the Newton to your computer, allowing your computer to run commands on your Newton, as well as accept output from the Newton to display on your computer screen. To connect the Inspector you must have installed the Toolkit.pkg that is inside your NTK folder to your Newton. This program will allow you to connect the Newton to Newton Toolkit.

Once you have the Toolkit.pkg installed, connect your serial cable from your computer to your Newton, then open the Toolkit.pkg on the Newton. Once you have connected the cable, opened the Toolkit.pkg, and have NTK running, press Connect Inspector. At this point, under NTK, click through the Window menu, to Connect Inspector (or you can use Ctrl + K). At this point the Inspector window appears, with options from left to right; connect & disconnect, stop on throws, trace on/off, step trace on/off, and exit break loop.