Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site mips.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!oliveb!glacier!mips!kim From: kim@mips.UUCP (Kim DeVaughn) Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga Subject: Re: Help with AbasiC Message-ID: <236@mips.UUCP> Date: Sat, 23-Nov-85 05:04:07 EST Article-I.D.: mips.236 Posted: Sat Nov 23 05:04:07 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 24-Nov-85 07:46:29 EST References: <376@ssc-vax.UUCP> Distribution: net Organization: mips ... where RISC is a way of life Lines: 172 > My main gripe, besides the fact that there's literally no > software available, is that I can't get the AbasiC to operate in > other than a 40 column mode. Is it possible to get an 80 column > mode out of it, or must I junk it and replace it with a "Real" > language when one comes out (is the assembler available yet???). I had the same "gripe" Warren, but a friend of mine who had had his machine for a couple of days longer came thru. Here's the trick: When ABasiC comes up type "screen 1,4,0". The screen will flash a bit, then lo and behold ... 80 columns. The screen function is described on pages 151-152 of the ABasiC manual. BTW, the default mode is not "1,4,0" as page 152 says; it's "0,?,0" the low-resolution mode (the ?-mark is because I haven't really *tested* the number of planes that it defaults to). Also, "1,5,0" won't work as that specifies high-res mode, with 5 planes (32 colors); the Amiga can't normally do this. It would be nice if ABasiC were fixed to respect the setting given in Preferences (and how about for screen colors, as well)! Another one *I* had trouble with was getting OUT of ABasiC without doing a reset. I tried EXIT, QUIT, STOP, END, LEAVE, BYE, DIE, every Cntl-Char, and a few words I can't use on the net. Then I stumbled upon page R-154; "of course you type SYSTEM", I exclaimed, "just like in APL" ... naturally! Maybe this is a common way to get out of a BASIC interpreter, but I've never used BASIC before (I prefer Assembler, but then what do you expect from someone in H/W Diagnostics? :-) ) One thing I feel pretty strongly about is telling a user how to terminate an application in the same paragraph or section as you told her how to get into it ... not 151 pages later (the manual tells you how to bring up ABasiC on page R-3, and I didn't see SYSTEM referenced until R-154 though I suppose I could have missed it). Here's a tidbit I stumbled upon by chance ... haven't seen it documented either: The friend I mentioned above wrote a quick-and-dirty Mandelbrot program to get a feel for the graphics capability and computational power of the Amiga. His Amiga is currently hooked up to a TV set, as his dealer was short of monitors. He coded the program so that it would give him a nice display on the TV set, but on my 1080 monitor, it ended up being about 2"x 6" in size (80 col mode). "Well", I says to myself, "here's a chance to play with ABasiC". After *finally* getting a listing of his code out (the way to do this is documented on page 172, but check the errata sheets BEFORE you spend an hour trying to get it to work), and hacking on it a bit, I get it up and it seems to be running. Since all the floating point is done in s/w, it's a pretty slooow program; but not to worry, the Amiga is a multi-tasking machine ... we'll just flip ABasiC into the background and go off and do something else while it's running. Up to the Back Gadget and click. Click. Click! CLICK! The screen does not change. Try pulling down the screen ... nope, won't budge. Well, lessee, maybe it'll pull down if I make the ABasiC window smaller. Down to the Sizing Gadget, size the window; up to the Drag Bar and pull. Ah ha! The ABasiC window bar was on top of the ABasiC screen bar. Now we'll get to the correct Back Gadget ... click. CLICK!!!!! The screen does not change. Try dragging the ABasiC *screen* down now that its exposed ... no dice. Now I *know* I've seen ABasiC and Workbench up together .... begin searching thru the manual ... yep, there it is on page 4-27 of Introduction to Amiga. What's this about shortcuts ... Amiga-M ... nothing happens. I remember reading someplace about Amiga-N ... nada! Back to the manuals. About this time, the Mandelbrot program does something bad ... Guru Meditation time. Later. I think I've fixed my error in the Mandelbrot code and have it running again. I try going thru some semblance of the above procedure, Desperately Seeking Workbench. Lo and behold, when I try dragging down the ABasiC *screen's* Drag Bar (after getting it out from underneath ABasiC's window Drag Bar) ... THERE IS THE WORKBENCH! OK, so what's different? The clock is sitting there ticking away, and ... wait a minute! I brought no clock up last time ... just went straight into ABasiC. CLOCK? NO CLOCK? Come on, let's get serious ... what can that have to do with it? But it does. WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? It seems that if you want to be able to foreground or background the "main" screen (i.e., the Workbench), something has to be "happening" on it, and the clock will do the trick ... perhaps they use it for "time-slicing" (sorry, I just couldn't resist :-) ). Now I've been able to get two ABasiC's up at once. Three, and I get a "Can't open window" Requester, which if I click and then try to move one of the ABasiC's Drag Bar ends up giving me Guru Meditation #00000003.000027A2. Oh well, this is release 1.0, right? Right! I'm sorry the above narration is so long (doubly so if this is "common knowledge"), but I wanted to make a point. For myself, I enjoy debugging new machines, and I get paid to do just that; it's more fun to me than Hack or Rogue or whatever. But, if people who are relatively familier with computers, and who are used to working on "Beta" level machines with incomplete documentation have these kinds of experiences, what will happen to the really naive users in the offices and schools and so forth? You know, the people of "The Marketplace"; the ones who ultimately decide whether a product is successful or not. The Amiga is a really GREAT machine, with tremendous potential. AmigaDOS Rev 1.0 has a LOT of holes, and some serious oversights in documentation of FUNDEMENTAL operations, in my opinion. Rev 1.1 is supposed to be out "next week" I'm told. I really hope to see a significant improvement in the system, and the documentation, but being somewhat cynical (working in Diagnostics will do that to you), I'd bet that the system won't be "clean" until about Rev 1.6 or so. There's one other thing I noticed while working with ABasiC that I'd like to see "fixed". The Front and Back Gadgets are in the "standard" places (i.e., the same as Workbench), but their iconic representation seems "backwards" to me. In Workbench, the Front Gadget is represented by a white square on top of a black square and vice-versa for the Back Gadget; in ABasiC, Front is blue/black on white and Back is white on blue/black. The white tends to dominate in the gadgets, visually, and tends to become associated with "this window/screen"; thus making ABasiC's representation seem backwards (to me, anyway). I bring this up because *consistency* in the user interface (particularly in iconic systems) is the key to effortless use. I realize ABasiC was developed by a third party, but I hope it will seem more consistent with the rest of the bundled s/w in future releases. Also, I hope Commodore-Amiga is *encouraging* all 3rd party ISV's to be consistent in their basic interfaces. (Is there a "suggested standard interface"? I've not seen one in the technical documentation that my dealer lets me make notes from.) Finally, if you're still with me, you deserve a cookie ... here's something else that's not mentioned in the bundled documentation. Didja know that there is a full-screen editor in Amiga ... and a line-editor? Yep, there surely are! For the full-screen editor, just go into CLI, and type ED . Bingo! For the line-editor, you type EDIT (my short experiance with the *line-editor* is that must already exist, else you get an error). The commands for ED were posted to the net some time ago in a reference-card form; at the time, I thought they were for the ABasiC editor. If anyone wants a copy, I'll be happy to e-mail it to them. I don't have the commands for the line-editor ("q" actually "quits" it though). To see most (all?) of the CLI commands, enter "dir :c" from CLI. In AmigaDOS, ":" means "root"; "cd /" is equivalent to "cd .." in UNIX(tm). Enter a command followed by a "?" to see the command-syntax. Hoping my Developer's Kit with the *real* documentation gets here SOON! /kim P.S. I attended a demo by Electronic Arts on their upcoming s/w. WOW! I was particularly impressed with Professional Graphics. It's supposed to be released the 1st week in December, and is supposed to retail at $89.95. They're waiting for the release of AmigaDOS Rev 1.1 to happen first ... tho the demo was run on Rev 1.0 without problems. "Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get." -- Lazarus Long -- UUCP: {decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!decwrl!mips!kim DDD: 415-960-1200 USPS: MIPS Computer Systems Inc, 1330 Charleston Rd, Mt View, CA 94043