n0stalgia

Classic Mac UI text (About/Help ALRT/DITL, TextEdit, STR#): always use Mac Roman + CR (0x0D) line endings, never lone LF. LF shows as rectangles / everything on one line in dialogs.

Classic Mac UI strings: use MacRoman/ASCII only in dialogs and alerts, never UTF-8 ellipsis, em dash, curly quotes, or multiplication sign; they show as garbage on Classic. Prefer ASCII ... and -.

Every Classic v1/v2 PICT needs a ClipRgn opcode, and PackBits row counts are 1 byte when rowBytes <= 250 (2 bytes above). Always validate generated PICTs before landing.

Classic Mac games must dynamically resize/scale the playfield with the window or fullscreen so the character is readable, never a fixed tiny playfield with black letterboxing.

Classic Mac dual-UI rule: System 7+ builds must not look like a postage-stamp app stuck top-left; use large growable windows that fill modern resolutions and scale the playfield. System 6 / Mac Plus builds stay compact when needed.

Never put passwords, API tokens, private keys, or other secrets into project files or any git repo. Keep secrets outside git and use placeholder example files in-repo.

Long-running work (compiling, testing, emulators, headless apps) runs on a separate build machine, never on the owner's main computer. Never execute anything from downloaded archives on the main computer.

For any classic Mac question, search classic Mac forums (tinkerdifferent.com, macintoshgarden.org, system7today.com, 68kmla.org, MacRumors PPC forum) for existing answers before solving from scratch.

Use for the first conversation with a new owner of the classic Mac specialist bot.