BASIC software archaeology

In recent months I’ve been on something of a source code rescue mission, with the aim of getting all of the “non-ARMv7” software on my website into a state where it can be built and maintained again. Most of the “lost” titles were written in BASIC, making them hard for me to look after using my current build environment (my previous build arrangements relying on unmaintained 26-bit-only software).

With the arrival of a usable version of Tokenize, I’ve now migrated all of the source files across into a format that can be stored in revision control and released via the same route as my other software. As such stevefryatt.org.uk/software/test/ now contains test builds of all of the following titles.

• Clipboard – Thomas Leonard’s utility for accessing the contents of the Global Clipboard, as supplied alongside IcnClipBrd.
• Crosses – Play Noughts and Crosses on the desktop.
• Float – Floating interactive help application. The test build is a previously unreleased and incomplete early “alpha” version of a possible Float 0.40 – it had existed only in a “crunched” form following the loss of the uncrunched source in 2003. This has now been rescued, with a possible view to finishing it off. In its current state it works, but the new features don’t!
• FreeMemory – Display the free memory on the desktop.
• GetFiler – Save the state of all open Filer windows on any version of RISC OS apart from RISC OS 6.
• Hangman – Play Impression’s Spell Module at the word-guessing game. The source for the released version has been rescued from the “crunched” code.
• Master – Identify hidden patterns using drag and drop.
• Pairs – Desktop memory game, involving the identification of pairs of cards.
• ResFSApps – Add application shortcuts to ResourceFS.
• Solitaire – Play Solitaire (the real one, and not the card game) on the desktop.
• TaskKill – Kill Wimp tasks from the command line.
• Windows Keys – Use the extra “Windows” and “Menu” keys on a modern keyboard on RISC OS 4 and 6. The source for the Configure plugin has been rescued from the “crunched” version.

Aside from Float they are all very similar to previous releases – except that they have been re-licensed under the open source EUPL. I hope to bring them up to a modern standard (bug fixes, improved documentation, modern stylistic stuff like Help entries in iconbar menus, and so on) over coming months, but in the meantime feedback will be welcome from users with all hardware.

Please note that the current stable releases will remain Freeware.

For those who are interested, the tools and libraries needed to build the releases above can be found at stevefryatt.org.uk/software/build/

These are NOT required to use any of the software – only to build it from source.

In addition to the titles above, I also have buildable versions of the source code for AwkScan, Boxes, Index and XOX3D (in the case of Index, yet more “previously unseen” code for version 1.11) awaiting release. However none of these currently seem to behave on modern hardware.