[net.micro.6809] BASIC09 and other OS-9 experiences

lee@cornell.UUCP (Lee Barford) (12/31/83)

Re: "BASIC09 for CoCo OS-9", sdyer@bbncca


	I've been using OS-9 and BASIC09 since they came out,
about 2-3/4 years ago. I've written many small and two large
(>120k of I-CODE) commercial programs. I also have a 56k SS-50
bus 6809 running OS-9, with BASIC09, Microware Pascal, and DynaSoft
Pascal (from Frank Hogg). I'd like to pass on a few of my experiences.


	1. BASIC09 does NOT have functions, only procedures. This is a
real pain. The definition of BASIC09 hasn't changed since it was
introduced three years ago: Microware's been too busy with Pascal, C, CoCo,
68000,...
BASIC09's built-in editor and debugger makes it the easiest application
development environment I've ever used. The editor complains about most
syntax errors as soon as the offending line is entered. The only
exceptions are control struncture misnesting and misused variable
error (which require global information to catch). BASIC09 complains
about these as soon as you exit EDIT mode.
	BASIC09 has some holes which show up when you try to write big
programs. For example, compiled (or "I-CODE") BASIC09 procedures are
OS-9 modules with type $22. When you call a compiled procedure for the
first time, it is loaded from /D0/CMDS (or the current execution
directory) and linked to by BASIC09. BUT there is no way to unlink it,
freeing up its memory, when you're done with it.

	2. I've seen some gripes here about Microware's editor. There
are several editors available for OS-9 which I prefer to Microware's.
I'll mention two of them below. Both are screen editors, and have many
text processing features (e.g., justification, pagination, headers and
footers, built in. These features can be turned off for doing program
editing. I don't know if either is available for the CoCo yet.
		Stylograph: originally a text processor for FLEX, it was
the first screen-oriented editor available for OS-9. It's reliable, and
comes with source and object for drivers for most common terminals and
printers. I use it for most of my personal text processing, since the
results of text formatting are visible on the terminal as soon as a
change is made.
		DynaStar/DynaForm: written in DynaStar Pascal, and
available from Frank Hogg. Very similar to WordStar, a popular CPM word
processor/editor. Although it also has the usual text processing
features, they are in a seperate program that the text is piped through.
It is faster than Stylograph, and has only two modes. I use it for my
program editing.

	

			Lee Barford @ Cornell Computer Science