--- In blassic@yahoogroups.com, "slothpuck" <ljones@l...> wrote:

> First of all does it require X windows to run or can it be run in a
> plain old terminal (but using just mode 0) ? .

It can be used on a terminal, the message "sin soporte de graficos"
is showed on the standard error ("whithout graphics supoort", I don't
remember never to translate it) and MODE with a value other than 0
will give the error "Illegal function call".

Any type of terminal supported by terminfo on your system can be
used, as long as TERM is correctly defined.

> (The mode command is intresting, reminds me of the old BBC Micro!).

I don't have documentation of BBC Basic, thus the similarities are
coincidental.

> And I see there's a sockets command, how do you use that?

You make "SOCKET machine$, port AS #n" and then read and write to
channel n as if it were a file. You can see the sample programs
htget.bas (simplified wget), maildrop.bas (inspect pop accounts) and
nttp.bas (simple news reader). Only client sockets, you can't write a
server with this.

> Will there be the possibity of adding a simple GUI to blassic
> programs prehaps and will there be a compiler?

Try the puzzle.bas program from the web site, it works with the mouse
(or with the stylus on a PDA). More elaborated user interfaces are
possible using the same technique.

> dos program it would attach your program to the BBCBASIC.EXE
> program and then write your program out and the BBCBASIC.EXE
> program all as one! Maybe that's a way round things?

That technique will be difficult on a multi platform system like
Blassic, we will need a new version for each operating system an
micrpprocessor used. I have in mind some sort with generating a C++
compilable file with the dump of a program and then compiling and
linking this file with the required parts of Blassic, but is an idea
only, I don't have worked on it.

> Blassic beats BWBASIC hands down any day! :)

Thanks.

Regards.