Snippets – 7th July 2013

Because breaking catching up is never easy… After falling behind with RISCOSitory updates late last year, I’ve been getting to the stage where I think I’ve almost caught back up, and then things get a little hectic and I fall behind again. I’ve therefore decided to resurrect the ‘snippets’ format to round up a few smaller news items in one go. This doesn’t bring me right up to date, and with the Midlands show almost upon us, I’m likely to fall further behind again, so there will probably be more…

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Basalt 1.50 beta, Hong Kong 1.50, 1.60, 1.67 released

IF LEN(string$)>255 THEN don’t be left stranded Last month, Steve Drain announced the release of version 1.50 beta of Basalt, his module that provides extra features to BBC BASIC V. This version provides support for long strings, which Steve refers to as ‘strands’. There is also a comprehensive StrongHelp manual, but as yet there isn’t an online HTML version available. Briefly explaining strands, Steve says:

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Basalt 1.42 beta released

Beta Basalt for a better BASIC. Steve Drain, developer of Basalt, has released a new version of the module. Short for BASIC Alternative keywords, Basalt is a module that adds many additional keywords and features to all versions of BBC BASIC V, the built in programming language included as part of the ROM (or ROM Image) in all versions RISC OS. Version 1.42 beta is intended as a stable – with a bracketed question mark in Steve’s announcement – version of the previous alpha version, with additional features:

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Snippets – 24th February 2012

Basalt and the Toolbox Steve Drain, prompted by a discussion in the RISC OS Open Ltd forum about AppBasic, has written a document about the using the Toolbox with Basalt which, he explains, has never been very well described. Basalt (“BASic ALTernative keywords”) is a module that extends BASIC by providing “alternative keywords by extending the use of actual keywords and adding new keywords, both of which are used completely as native BASIC keywords.” The document is available online, at the link given above, and it is also included in…

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BASIC libraries galore

Steve Drain has released a number of BASIC libraries, and a new version of the Basalt module. The Strings BASIC library provides routines for handling long strings, referenced by normal string variables. All the standard string keywords are emulated and work with any combination of normal string variables and expressions and long strings. Written to explore a new idea for providing long string support in Basalt, which is yet to be fully written, Steve is releasing the library because it may be of interest.

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