Glass ProjectResearch
Glass Project exists because MacProject Pro’s file format and calculations were worked out and written down. Everything found is public. Each finding says where it came from: read from the program’s code or resources, seen in the files it saved, or checked in MacProject Pro itself, running under emulation. Anything inferred rather than confirmed is marked as a guess.
The documents
- The file format: how a MacProject Pro 1.5 file is laid out, every kind of record and what its fields hold, and what a file needs before MacProject Pro will open it.
- Scheduling: work calendars to the half hour, constraints, lags, actual dates, summaries and the critical path, rule by rule.
- Leveling: how the resource leveler finds conflicts, which solutions it offers, and how it ranks them.
- How it behaves: the menus and command keys, the Tools palette, what the mouse does on each chart, and the dialogs. Glass Project follows them.
How the findings were checked
MacProject Pro 1.5 shipped with 31 project and Perspective files. They are the test: Glass Project’s tests take each one apart and compare what they compute with what MacProject Pro saved.
| What | Result |
|---|---|
| Records decoded, each to its last byte | 5,016 of 5,016, in 31 files |
| Files written back unchanged, byte for byte | 31 of 31 |
| Task dates recalculated as MacProject Pro stored them | 618 of 619 tasks |
| Resource costs recalculated as stored | 902 of 902 assignments |
| Dependency lines placed as stored | 737 of 785 (most of the rest are a point off) |
| Files Glass Project writes, opened in MacProject Pro 1.5 | edited samples, new projects and links between projects all open |
The one task out of 619 that differs belongs to a subproject whose calendar lives in another file. The tests are in the source. The sample files belong to Claris, so they aren’t published with it.
What’s still open
- Files from MacProject II and earlier use older formats that aren’t decoded.
- A few stored fields are still unnamed; the format document lists them.
- The Bar Formats options are a best guess.
If you know something that isn’t here, or have MacProject files that don’t open, see Contributing.