BlueBox is a simple graphics library powered by libtcod for simulating the appearance and interface of the Buttech "Blue Box", an educational computer custom developed for the Butte County Board of Education in the 1980s.

BlueBox presents a simple object interface which emulates the basic routines of the BB hardware, primarily its graphics capabilities, in order to write Python code which interacts with the user in a manner consistent with the Blue Box's appearance and interface.

On initialization, the BlueBox object sets up the interface, and subsequent object function calls control that interface.

BlueBox is not a true emulator or virtual machine. The Blue Box's hardware was never fully documented and most of the hardware was destroyed or recycled after a tax use scandal regarding the BlueBox's chief advocate with the BCBoE. Rather, BlueBox merely aims to simplify the process of creating work-alike software in Python.

Sample Python applications that make use of the BlueBox library will be provided, including reconstructions of some common tools such as the built-in VIOLET programming language as well as other available software.

libbluebox.py contains the BlueBox object.

violet.py is the VIOLET interactive editor.

runviolet.py is the interpreter runtime that violet.py calls to execute VIOLET programs.

The BlueBox guide is here: http://jarcane.github.io/BlueBox/bluebox.html

The current spec/guide for VIOLET can be found here: http://jarcane.github.io/BlueBox/violet.html

Additional documentation for BlueBox and for the VIOLET language is also provided in the repo in LyX, PDF, and HTML formats.

All code except where otherwise indicated is released under the GPL v3.

Copyright 2014 by John S. Berry III.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.