BBC BASIC for SDL 2.0 version 1.03a released

[Richard Russell]

I apologise again for what may be considered an inappropriate use of this forum; I am posting here in lieu of more appropriate places where sadly contributions from me are not welcome.

I have released version 1.03a of BBC BASIC for SDL 2.0, the cross-platform programming language for Windows, MacOS, Linux, Raspbian (Raspberry Pi), Android and iOS. The changes in this version are as follows:

• IDEs / Compiler
  
  BBCEdit: Andy Parkes' alternative IDE has been updated to fix a few bugs.
  
  SDLIDE: The Search BASIC Programs utility has been ported from BB4W and can be found in the Utilities menu. It searches for a given string in both tokenised (.bbc) and plain-text (.bas) programs, recursively searching sub-directories.

• BASIC Interpreter / Run Time Engine
  
  @dir$ and @lib$ now use backslash path delimiters consistently in Windows. This is only a cosmetic change, since Windows will accept forward slashes at the API level, but eliminates an anomaly.
  
  Mouse wheel rotations are now ignored at the immediate-mode prompt and in the INPUT statement.

• Libraries
  
  The dlglib.bbc library has been extended to support multi-column list boxes.
  
  The File Selector dialogue used in recorder.bbc and compiler.bbc has been hived-off into a separate library, filedlg.bbc, so that it is easier to use from other programs.

• Example Programs
  
  mandel.bbc: This has been completely rewritten so that the calculations are performed on the GPU rather than the CPU, making it no longer x86-specific (and allowing it to run in iOS despite assembler code not being permitted).

This new version may be downloaded, for all the supported platforms, from the usual location. The GitHub repository has been updated (used to build the MacOS, Raspberry Pi, iOS and 64-bit Linux editions, currently).

[Soruk]

I apologise again for what may be considered an inappropriate use of this forum;

I'm not sure why it would be considered inappropriate, BBCSDL is software for PC/Mac/UNIX. Certainly no less appropriate than my Matrix Brandy thread!

[Richard Russell]

I'm not sure why it would be considered inappropriate, BBCSDL is software for PC/Mac/UNIX. Certainly no less appropriate than my Matrix Brandy thread!

Matrix Brandy is designed to be highly compatible with the ARM BASIC that comes with RISC OS, and therefore can legitimately be considered to be part of the Acorn family of products, which is what StarDot supports. My BASICs have relatively poor compatibility with any Acorn product, and many people (certainly within the RISC OS community) consider me to be something of a traitor and to be 'anti Acorn', so StarDot is not a natural home.

I ought to promote my products at the forum(s) dedicated to them, and would if circumstances allowed.

[dhg2]

and many people (certainly within the RISC OS community) consider me to be something of a traitor and to be 'anti Acorn'

If this is true, those people are just being silly and you shouldn't be concerned about what they think.

[alex_farlie]

Thank you once again for your continued efforts with this

[zeem]

and many people (certainly within the RISC OS community) consider me to be something of a traitor and to be 'anti Acorn'

If this is true, those people are just being silly and you shouldn't be concerned about what they think.

Seconded.

[Soruk]

and many people (certainly within the RISC OS community) consider me to be something of a traitor and to be 'anti Acorn'

If this is true, those people are just being silly and you shouldn't be concerned about what they think.

Seconded.

Thirded - and of course, if memory serves (though I never got to play with one) didn't your version of BBC BASIC come as part of the package with the Z80 Second Processor?

[LordVaderUK]

Thank you for this excellent product. I've been using it lots to rekindle my love of BBC BASIC programming!

[Richard Russell]

didn't your version of BBC BASIC come as part of the package with the Z80 Second Processor?

Yes (Acorn weren't exactly happy about its incompatibilities but at the time there wasn't much alternative, and in my BBC role I no doubt thought it was acceptable ). But as a link between my products and Acorn, to use as a justification for promoting them here, it's rather tenuous!

I received this message via Twitter yesterday: "Sophie's BASIC was originally in 6502 assembler, then ARMcode, then rewritten in C++ by ROOL". It's the first I've heard of an official C++ version, does anybody here have any details?

[Soruk]

I received this message via Twitter yesterday: "Sophie's BASIC was originally in 6502 assembler, then ARMcode, then rewritten in C++ by ROOL". It's the first I've heard of an official C++ version, does anybody here have any details?

I wish I could confirm, but having had a look at riscosopen's CVS and downloaded a tarball, it's written in ARM assembly code.

(However, the code does contain a nice comment explaining the algorithm used by BASIC to convert the ellipse rotation into the mechanism used by PLOT. After I got sheared ellipses working via PLOT, this was instrumental in getting rotated ellipses from the BASIC ELLIPSE keyword working properly)

[davidb]

I wish I could confirm, but having had a look at riscosopen's CVS and downloaded a tarball, it's written in ARM assembly code.

It still looks like assembly to me, but you don't have to use CVS to get it any longer. ROOL have set up a GitLab instance for the RISC OS sources.

[Phlamethrower]

Correct, RISC OS BASIC is still written in assembler. ROOL converting it to C++ would be an odd choice, since the compiler that's used for ROM builds has abysmal C++ support (it's reliant on cfront!). C would be more believable, but even then it would be an odd choice since there are other components which would benefit a lot more from a rewrite in a higher-level language (e.g. FileCore, for which lots of major changes/improvements are planned).

(However, the code does contain a nice comment explaining the algorithm used by BASIC to convert the ellipse rotation into the mechanism used by PLOT. After I got sheared ellipses working via PLOT, this was instrumental in getting rotated ellipses from the BASIC ELLIPSE keyword working properly)

Written a couple of years ago after I discovered that BASIC64's rotated ellipse support has been broken since forever!

[Richard Russell]

I wish I could confirm, but having had a look at riscosopen's CVS and downloaded a tarball, it's written in ARM assembly code.

I've received feedback from my Twitter informant who now admits that the claim of a C++ implementation of Sophie's BASIC was a misunderstanding on his part.