Updated BASIC Editor

[tom_seddon]

Hello,

I've been working off and on for a while on an updated version of Acornsoft's BASIC Editor. It's got a number of improvements over the original, and now comes with a HI version for your 6502 Second Processor, giving you 45,054 bytes free.

Get it here: https://github.com/tom-seddon/basic_editor

Previously, I was posting in the BASIC Editor thread about this, but I thought I'd make a thread specially for it. I'll be posting here each time a new version is made.

(If you use it and find any bugs or have suggestions then please post them here too!)

[galax]

.

[tom_seddon]

F9 working would be great- it seems they disabled all function keys in command mode, maybe felt it was clearer than having only some work. I thought it might have been done like that to allow *KEY function key bindings in command mode, but they don't work either!

RUN and maybe ZSAVE+RUN would be very handy to have.

I've been thinking about this today... I think I missed something obvious when I posted, which is that command mode reads input lines using OSWORD 0. This doesn't report keypresses char by char, making it impossible (I think? - at least without doing some rather involved horrid stuff) to detect f9 neatly.

You do find out when ESCAPE is pressed, though - that's how it does the edit/command mode switch - so what I'll probably do instead is make ESCAPE the key that always does the same thing instead. Something like the following, which you'd be able to do in either mode:

ESCAPE = toggle command/edit mode
SHIFT+ESCAPE = return to BASIC
CTRL+ESCAPE = RUN
SHIFT+CTRL+ESCAPE = ZSAVE + RUN

(ZSAVE+RUN will probably give an error when ZSAVE isn't valid, since obviously for some types of program you really don't want to run it if it didn't get saved first )

I know SHIFT+CTRL is rather unusual compared to the rest of the BASIC Editor, but the BBC is a bit short of meta keys.

Hopefully I'll be looking at this one evening next week

[tom_seddon]

I've uploaded version 1.39. It doesn't do the ESCAPE thing (yet...) but it does have a new ZRUN command, abbreviation ZR, that does ZSAVE then RUN. So I am whittling away, if rather slowly, at the number of keypresses required for this operation.

(I realise the name "ZRUN" doesn't make much sense, not that "ZSAVE" is all that mnemonic either ;) - perhaps it should just be "ZR"? That would save 2 bytes as well.)

1.39 also does a few things on startup to reset OSWRCH state, so if you've done a VDU5 or something then you won't be stuck that way.

[daveejhitchins]

Tom:

Not sure if you've had a look at the Advanced Basic Editor Code that ACP sold, here. But if there's anything in there that would be of use, please help yourself. No issues with (c) as this version is with Baildon Electronics - So, now available to all

Whilst trying to recover the last disc I did notice a comment that Alan Glover had requested a change that affected the function keys - I'd need to have another look. However, I believe it was to enable their use within the command screen. I'll try and clarify that.

Dave H

[galax]

.

[tom_seddon]

Tom:Not sure if you've had a look at the Advanced Basic Editor Code that ACP sold, here. But if there's anything in there that would be of use, please help yourself. No issues with (c) as this version is with Baildon Electronics - So, now available to all :D

I had a quick look but I can't seem to find any code that's related to the bit that's like the Acornsoft BASIC Editor - if you do a search for the string "are strings", for example (as printed by the HELP command) then nothing turns up. I'll be having a proper look through what's there soon though :)

[Elminster]

Okay another go at a new feature to add to the BASIC ROM then as my last one was me not reading the manul properly.

In the Editor built into the master you can temptorary flik the arrows/copy keys over to the original usage. I.e. arrow to a line and copy it. This is incrdible useful for copying stuff about, with out all the mark, copy, join, split milarky you have to do for a simple change. You can of course exit ABE and co back to normal BASIS and do it there, but just wondered if it could be squeezed in.

I did try testing original 1.3 vs Tom's 1.39 but went back to 1.39 fairly quickly.

[daveejhitchins]

In the Editor built into the master you can temporarily flik the arrows/copy keys over to the original usage. I.e. arrow to a line and copy it. This is incredibly useful for copying stuff about, with out all the mark, copy, join, split malarkey you have to do for a simple change. You can of course exit ABE and co back to normal BASIS and do it there, but just wondered if it could be squeezed in.

Hmmm! That sounds like a good feature to have, I'll add it to my ever growing list - Mind you it may be better if it works like modern computers with - Highlight text - Ctrl C or X - Ctrl V - - - Let's see how much room there is . . .

Dave H

[Elminster]

Or you could steal commands from vi/emac. Both very good editors that are still used and been around since the dawn of time. But I think somewhere Tom said was only 600 bytes left (no sure if that applies to PRES version, probably seems almost the same but with the extra utils). SO I thought a 500 item feature list was pushing it.

But I did think as *edit(or) could do it and Acorn probably reused a lot of their ABE code in it, it might not be that hard to do.

[tom_seddon]

There's actually only about 100 bytes free! - though there's probably scope for squeezing another 1-200 bytes out. The code is a bit inefficient in places, and there are some lengthy messages here and there. I need to experiment to see how much more can be squeezed out.

I do like the idea of being able to use the standard cursor keys! - I'll have to check the code. The line numbers have the leftmost columns to themselves, and I can't remember whether the ROM sets up the text window for this or whether it does it all manually.

I should really tidy up the disassembly so it's buildable with BeebAsm or vasm (rather than dasm, which is rather buggy...), and put the result on GitHub.

--Tom

P.S. One thing I did have in mind for the space was some way of handling REM> comments automatically, so you can do a SAVE+RUN from inside BASIC - currently I do *BE then ZR, but it would be nice to just be able to do *ZR or something, without having to leave BASIC. Just haven't figured out how to make this work particularly nicely over the Tube. It's difficult to access the Tube RAM from a service call. My current plan is to have it put "ZR|M" into the keyboard buffer, then do the equivalent of *BE :) - just need to try this out and see how well it works in practice.

[daveejhitchins]

I have a list of upgrades/enhancements, that I'll post later today, for the ABE. Space permitting, of course.

I definitely like the copy key idea, however, that may only work fo 'on screen' editing! Once you get used to the mark-up method it's relatively easy - but you can only do full lines!

Due to key mapping issues, on BeebEm3, I've not been able to use all of the editing features, so one of the enhancements is key mapping.

More later - Dave H

P.S. I still need to search for the full source code.

[Elminster]

I definitely like the copy key idea, however, that may only work fo 'on screen' editing! Once you get used to the mark-up method it's relatively easy - but you can only do full lines!

Yep. A lot of the time the thing you want to copy is on the same page, so not a huge restriction. Now I know how to do it, the ABE way of copying is quite good if you want to copy a whole line. If you want bits from various lines, or just copy a few variables from preceding line it is a bit clunky, that is where the copy key on page would be great.

You can save the clipboard and mouse features for version 2

Due to key mapping issues, on BeebEm3, I've not been able to use all of the editing features, so one of the enhancements is key mapping.

What was your issue with getting beebem4 Mac working? Have you tried Tom's new emulator? has a Mac version and Remappable keys.

[daveejhitchins]

What was your issue with getting beebem4 Mac working?

Starting it just flashes 'something' on the screen (too quick to see) and nothing!

Have you tried Tom's new emulator? has a Mac version and Remappable keys.

Have I missed that?

Here's the list of what I'd like to see in the ABE, having used it to write the MGC Menu program:
(1) When loading a file, display file name after Program size
(2) If file name not known, e.g. when entering from BASIC - read file name from first line of code. Must conform to: !*filename*! Or similar . . .
(3) In UTILS, when Packing, : (colon) and blank lines to be removed
(4) In UTILS, when packing, remove REMs in assembler code e.g. all after a ; (semi colon)
(5) In UTILS, when listing search results, highlight searched string - in colour or reversed text - Electron currently just puts a space in front and behind the string.
(6) When EDITING, allow jumps, to follow: procedures, functions etc. with special key presses e.g. with the cursor on a procedure call pressing <key combination> would move cursor to that procedure definition etc. A similar <key combination>, when the cursor is positioned on ENDPROC take you back to the initial procedure call. GOTOs would just move you to the appropriate line.
(7) In UTILS, when searching, allow quotations to distinguish between: e.g. ENTRIES% and NENTRIES%
Maybe a Bug! Using Pack, in the UTILS, I've had 'LANGUAGES' and 'UTILITIES' treated as variables e.g. they were shortened! Even though they were in a DATA statement. Changed to 'Utilities' was OK!
(8) Key mapping . . . Alterable for use with an Emulator??
(9) Loses file name after using UTILS e.g. UPDATE is no longer valid. **
(10) Loses current working Line Number after using UTILS e.g. escape will take you to first line! ** Maybe because there is no common work area!
(11) Option, when EXITing from ABE, to set PAGE e.g. EXIT &1400 would exit the BASIC Editor set page to &1400 and move BASIC to start at PAGE.
(12) Remember MODE when returning from UTILS or use same MODE as BE for UTILS (preferred)

Not much . . .

Dave H

[Elminster]

What was your issue with getting beebem4 Mac working?

Starting it just flashes 'something' on the screen (too quick to see) and nothing!

http://www.stardot.org.uk/forums/viewto ... 61#p168273
Beebem4 for Mac is here. Plus the fix for your issue of opening the package and starting the binary directly.

Tom's new emulator with Mac version is here
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=13081

Edit. 13) copy key ?
14) useful stuff in Jonathan's Basutils on mdfs.net
15) Tom's start on white text on black background is useful
16) use any mode to edit (Tom) - expanded version of remembering mode
17) zsave/zrun Tom)

[tom_seddon]

The code for my updated BASIC Editor version is now on GitHub: https://github.com/tom-seddon/basic_editor (This is now its official home, and the old page redirects you there.)

Please don't laugh at how awful and bizarrely inconsistent the code looks... it's had a storied history. I think it's now on its 3rd assembler, and I've fixed it up each time using search and replace ;)

--Tom

[tom_seddon]

I've added version 1.40, which adds something I've wanted for a while: an easy way of auto saving from within BASIC. There's two new * commands that you can use from BASIC if your program has a REM> in the first line: *BZ (save), and *BR (save and RUN).

Performance isn't amazing over the Tube - it does a language switch to the editor, then back again to BASIC... - but it's pretty convenient.

There's now 30 bytes free in the ROM (and 12 in the HI version!) so I'm going to have to shrink things down a bit before I think about adding anything else in :)

--Tom

[jregel]

I've been using 1.40 tonight on BeebEm in Master 128 mode and love it. It's the first time I've tried to do some "serious" work with the BASIC Editor, and it's very impressive and a huge improvement over the arrow keys and copy key.

I've noticed that the manual states that Ctrl-Left is "Beginning of previous statement" and Ctrl-Right is "Beginning of next statement". However, Ctrl-Left is taking me to the start of the current line, while Ctrl-Right is taking me to the start of the next line. I think the manual here is a bit misleading as a line may have multiple statements.

It would be very useful to have the ability to:

- Move cursor to start of current line (which we currently get with Ctrl-Left)
- Move cursor to end of current line (which I can't find a keyboard combination for?)
- Move cursor to next statement (i.e., the next : on the line)
- Move cursor to the previous statement (i.e., the previous : on the line)

Any chance all this can be squeezed into 30 bytes..?

If this already exists, but I've missed it, please put me straight!

[daveejhitchins]

Maybe you’d like to try the ABE (Advanced BASIC Editor) and see what you think. Search the Forum for ABE. Just ask if you need some assistance. It’s a 2 ROM program and comes with some useful utilities.

Dave H

[jregel]

Maybe you’d like to try the ABE (Advanced BASIC Editor) and see what you think. Search the Forum for ABE. Just ask if you need some assistance. It’s a 2 ROM program and comes with some useful utilities.

Dave H

Thanks Dave. I thought the PRES ABE was basically the Acorn BASIC Editor with a bunch of additional utilities, and that Tom's work expanded the Acorn editor with new functionality. Is that not the case?

[Elminster]

I used Tom’s version and then JPH’s utils. But I have the PRES one as well. Used them a lot till my Basic program got to big to run it. Reminds me, Need to get back to finishing that.

[tom_seddon]

It would be very useful to have the ability to:

- Move cursor to start of current line (which we currently get with Ctrl-Left)
- Move cursor to end of current line (which I can't find a keyboard combination for?)
- Move cursor to next statement (i.e., the next : on the line)
- Move cursor to the previous statement (i.e., the previous : on the line)

Any chance all this can be squeezed into 30 bytes..? :wink:

Glad you've been finding it useful - I've always much preferred it to the standard editing environment too!

As for the suggestions, I agree with all 4 - I was using the editor for some assembly language stuff last month, and the lack of statement-by-statement movement was a bit annoying. The other two haven't bothered me as much, but it's silly not to have them.

The free space is hopefully a bit less of a problem now, as I spent some time chipping away at the code a couple of months ago and managed to squeeze 300 or so bytes out of it. Needs a bit more testing, but there is now at least a bit of room!

As far as shortcuts for these go, I'll probably just repurpose some of the cursor key shortcuts - I've never found shift+left/right or ctrl+up/down useful! (That might mean a bit more code can be stripped out as well.) Might shuffle things about a bit and make ctrl+up/down move from line to line while I'm there. That feels like it could be a bit more mnemonic.

--Tom

P.S. while thinking along these lines, I also noticed scroll on (CTRL+f5) and scroll off (CTRL+f6), which I'm not really sure are any use either! So maybe those could go too, freeing up a couple of shortcut keys for potential future expansion. The background and foreground colour keys (CTRL+f7 and CTRL+f8) can probably also be removed - supposed the colour changed immediately while in command mode, then you could experiment with your colour scheme that way instead.

[tom_seddon]

Maybe you’d like to try the ABE (Advanced BASIC Editor) and see what you think. Search the Forum for ABE. Just ask if you need some assistance. It’s a 2 ROM program and comes with some useful utilities.

Dave H :D

Thanks Dave. I thought the PRES ABE was basically the Acorn BASIC Editor with a bunch of additional utilities, and that Tom's work expanded the Acorn editor with new functionality. Is that not the case?

The BASIC editor stuff I've done is an expansion of the Acornsoft ROM and not the PRES one.

Dave posted the PRES ABE source code in another thread, but aside from having a brief look at it at the time to see if it included the source code for the Acornsoft editor part (it didn't appear to) I've never done anything to/with it. I've only ever had 1 ROM slot free for BASIC editor purposes and the ABE takes up 2 :(

I did give it a brief try, and from memory the main BASIC editor looked very similar to the Acornsoft one - the main difference as I recall being an extra command to activate the new functionality. There wasn't much room left in the original Acornsoft ROM, so there can't have been all that much new code in there, so it ought to be possible to find the changes and integrate them into my updated editor, producing a version that can be used with the other 16K part of the PRES ROM. (Ideally this would be a single version that would autodetect the other ROM - this would work well with my setup, as I've got the basic editor permanently installed, and could load the other half into sideways RAM - but a build-time switch, producing two versions, is also an option.)

I will have a look at this soon, as it shouldn't take too long to at least figure out how big a job it will be ;)

--Tom

[lurkio]

I guess it all depends on what you're familiar with -- and I know and appreciate that Tom's made some amazing improvements to the Acornsoft BASIC Editor, not to mention the fact that I myself have made a lot of use of the PRES editor's Pack (compression) routine -- but when you're actually writing a program, is it really better to work in a native Beeb editor like Acornsoft's (i.e. Tom's), or PRES's, rather than in a modern text editor on a modern OS?

For Maze Of Madness I just used TextWrangler on macOS, and it made life so much easier: the ability to quickly cut-and-paste and reorder lines of code -- that alone was a godsend! Plus there's the large screen real-estate that means you can see more of your program at once! Etc., etc.

[Elminster]

I made big use of it a while but that was because the hardware I was only available on a real machine. I would do the coding on BBEdit (you know that text wrangler is no longer developed and replaced by cut down version of BBEdit?) and copy it to real hardware. But when I was debugging a > 32k program it was a nightmare with list, arrows and copy.

[lurkio]

you know that text wrangler is no longer developed and replaced by cut down version of BBEdit?

Rings a vague bell! Thanks. I just installed TextWrangler ages ago and then stopped updating it because it was working fine for my purposes.

[daveejhitchins]

Thanks Dave. I thought the PRES ABE was basically the Acorn BASIC Editor with a bunch of additional utilities, and that Tom's work expanded the Acorn editor with new functionality. Is that not the case?

No, we licenced it from Altera in Leeds. Here's a link to the ABE thread.

Dave H

[tom_seddon]

[I managed to click 'edit' rather than 'quote, making a real mess of this post, so, ugh, I've just deleted it.]

[tom_seddon]

I've added 1.41-beta to the releases page: https://github.com/tom-seddon/basic_edi ... r/releases

It's a beta because the changes ended up a bit invasive, but it has been behaving itself so far, and this is the version I'm currently using.

There's now nearly 0.5K of space free in the ROM, so the possibilties for future expansion are, if not actually limitless, certainly more limitless than before ;)

Current plans are:

* jregel's extra editing suggestions
* sort out interaction with the PRES BASIC utils ROM
* add edit mode shortcuts for RUN, ZSAVE, and ZRUN
* try to figure out some way of integrating with BASIC a bit better. If you hit an error while the program was running, it would be neat if you could go straight to that line in the BASIC editor, for example. Hook into OSWORD 0 or something, so you can do it via a keyboard shortcut. Just being able to ESCAPE from a blank line in BASIC to get into the editor would be neat. (etc., etc. - just whatever I find that's easy to do, really)

--Tom

[jregel]

I've added 1.41-beta to the releases page: https://github.com/tom-seddon/basic_edi ... r/releases

It's a beta because the changes ended up a bit invasive, but it has been behaving itself so far, and this is the version I'm currently using.

There's now nearly 0.5K of space free in the ROM, so the possibilties for future expansion are, if not actually limitless, certainly more limitless than before

Current plans are:

* jregel's extra editing suggestions
* sort out interaction with the PRES BASIC utils ROM
* add edit mode shortcuts for RUN, ZSAVE, and ZRUN
* try to figure out some way of integrating with BASIC a bit better. If you hit an error while the program was running, it would be neat if you could go straight to that line in the BASIC editor, for example. Hook into OSWORD 0 or something, so you can do it via a keyboard shortcut. Just being able to ESCAPE from a blank line in BASIC to get into the editor would be neat. (etc., etc. - just whatever I find that's easy to do, really)

--Tom

Sounds great, Tom. I'll give it a try later.