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• GRASP: The GRAphical Scheme Programming Environment

This is the repository of the GRASP project, which is intended to be an extensible editor of s-expressions optimized for interacting via touch screen.

GRASP is still work in progress, and isn't yet mature enough to perform even the most basic editing tasks (but each day this moment is getting closer).

If you'd like to see a more detailed explanation, you may want to watch [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bedP4m9FV8k][a demo]].

GRASP comes in three flavours: an Android client,

[[./doc/img/grasp-android.png]]

a desktop client

[[./doc/img/grasp-desktop.png]]

and a terminal client

[[./doc/img/grasp-terminal.png]]

** Building the Android client

The Android client can be built in the Termux app on Android devices. It requires the tools that are installed for the [[https://github.com/BuildAPKs/buildAPKs][buildAPKs]] project (you can review the ~build-android.sh~ script for the details).

If the termux storage is set up properly,the script tries to copy the APK to the ~Download/GRASP~ directory of the Android

If those dependencies are satisfied, it should be sufficient to type in the terminal:

#+BEGIN_SRC bash ./build-android.sh #+END_SRC

On the first run, it generates and stores a key for signing the package - if you want to be serious about it, you'd probably need to update the credentials (or something).

The script should also work on most other systems, but

• in addition to JVM runtime - it requires tools such as ~aapt~ and ~zipalign~ (other, JVM-based tools such as ~d8~ or ~apksigner~ are included in the ~tools~ directory).

** Running and/or building the desktop/terminal client

Both terminal and desktop clients can either be run directly from source, or precompiled to ~.jar~ files.

In both cases, they require the Java Runtime Environment to be present on the system.

In order to run the clients directly from the source, it should be sufficient to run

#+BEGIN_SRC bash ./grasp-terminal #+END_SRC

to run the terminal client, or

#+BEGIN_SRC bash ./grasp-desktop #+END_SRC

to run the desktop client.

This operation recompiles all the sources every time it is run, so it can take considerable amount of time, especially on slower machines. Therefore it can make sense to pre-compile all the sources before running.

This can be achieved by running

#+BEGIN_SRC bash ./build-terminal.sh #+END_SRC

for the terminal client, and

#+BEGIN_SRC bash ./build-desktop.sh #+END_SRC

for the desktop client.

After the operation is done, the terminal client can be invoked by running

#+BEGIN_SRC bash java -jar build/grasp-terminal.jar #+END_SRC

and the desktop client - by running

#+BEGIN_SRC bash java -jar build/grasp-desktop.jar #+END_SRC

The ~.jar~ files generated this way contain all the required dependencies, which - in the case of the desktop client - means just the [[https://www.gnu.org/software/kawa/][Kawa]] compiler, and in the case of the terminal client - also the [[https://github.com/mabe02/lanterna][Lanterna]] library for terminal rendering.

(Both dependencies are included in the ~libs~ directory.)

** Debugging the Android client

Some builds of Android are capable of printing complete stack traces on application crash.

However, this usually isn't the case, so it is required to enable 'programmer options' on the Android device, and then enable USB debugging on the device in order to access that information.

It also requires adb application to be installed on an external computer. If all these prerequisites are satisfied, the crash logs can be fetched using the following command:

#+BEGIN_SRC bash adb logcat --buffer=crash #+END_SRC

If you happen to know how to access the crash information from the Android device itself and wouldn't mind sharing that information with me, I'd be grateful.

** Running the desktop client on Android

While it might seem ridiculous from the usability perspective, it may sometimes be convenient to be able to test the desktop client from Android.

The exact tutorial on running the X11 server in Termux can be found at https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Graphical_Environment but once all the packages and apps are installed and configured, the VNC server can be run by typing (in Termux)

#+BEGIN_SRC bash vncserver -localhost #+END_SRC

Once this is done, it is also required to type

#+BEGIN_SRC bash export DISPLAY=":1" #+END_SRC

to be able to run the desktop client from a particular bash session.

** Older prototypes

The older prototypes of GRASP (for Android only) can be found in the [[https://github.com/panicz/grasp-android]] repository (which is now archived).

There is an even older prototype which runs in Racket, and which can be found in the [[https://github.com/panicz/sracket]] repository (the ~5.rkt~ file).