knudsen@ihnss.UUCP (12/25/83)
People have been asking how BASIC09's graphics abilities compare with Coco ROM BASIC. Well, the news is mixed. Graphics in B9 is like I/O in C; it is not part of the language, but is a separate procedure library. The machine-code procudure supplied is GFX. Very much like OS9's own CCIO graphics, plus CIRCLE command. You have the equivalents of LINE, PSET, PCLS, PPOINT, CIRCLE, and JOYSTK. What's missing are PAINT, the highly efficient DRAW, and the pseudo-sprites PUT and GET. The PAINT omission is especially unfortunate for serious business users who can't color in their pie charts and bar graphs. What there is is well done, tho. Plus you can always add your own machine-code routines (easily called from BASIC09). GFX can tell you where in RAM the 6K graphics page starts for such work. Like CCIO, all you have are PMODEs 3 and 4 (hi-res, 6K). As someone else said, that may be more K than you can always afford.... mike k