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From: hughesmp@vax1.tcd.ie
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn,eunet.micro.acorn
Subject: Re: Archimedes Suggestions
Message-ID: <1991Feb13.163527.7782@vax1.tcd.ie>
Date: 13 Feb 91 16:35:26 GMT
References: <1991Feb11.124128.2990@cns.umist.ac.uk> <1991Feb12.212522.14434@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Organization: Trinity College Dublin
Lines: 29

In article <1991Feb12.212522.14434@watdragon.waterloo.edu>, gcwilliams@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Graeme Williams) writes:

> Here's one thing I'd like to see. The graphics code in ROM for drawing
> circles and rectangles and such like appears to be very inefficient,
> it'd be nice if these could be made faster (like by a factor of 3 or 4
> in some cases - I believe this is possible)

I reckon that to provide the functionality to cope with everything that
those routines currently can, they would have to go at around current speed.
(Although, compared with any other BASIC, that speed is amazing). Remember
that these routines can cope with any mode, going off the screen, screen
swapping (not difficult), wrapping around the end of screen memory, many
colours, many methods of plotting ie OR, EOR, &c., stippling (I think),
to name but a few. I reckon that they did fairly well; if you want to write
a quick circle routine, get a library of routines, which when you call the
initialize code, will assemble the code, and then provide procedures which
call the code, ie PROCcircle(x,y,r), and so on. These can have as little
error trapping and functionality as you want, with maximimum speed.

A nice thing for BASIC would be to be able to define new commands in a module;
the commands would be stored as ASCII in the program, just like if you type
 10BLABBER 20,30,40
and the interpreter would come across this, and poll the currently installed
modules to see if anyone would offer to do it. That would be _gorgeous_, and
would allow for a fully expandable instruction set..

> Graeme Williams - a Kiwi in Canada

T.