Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!mandrill!neoucom!wtm
From: wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Fish Disk #13 and AmigaBasic
Summary: Here, here!, Leo
Message-ID: <831@neoucom.UUCP>
Date: 8 Dec 87 14:32:27 GMT
References: <42600011@uicsrd> <4649@well.UUCP>
Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
Lines: 44


AmigaBasic?, we don't need no steenking AmigaBasic.

I agree with Leo.  The Metacomco ABasiC sold with the A100 was
(is?) a pretty good interpreter.  While, it doesn't have the
the fancy-shmancy windows of AmigaBasic, I don't ever recall ABasiC
visiting the Guru for no particular reason the way AmigaBaic does.

The other thing that makes ABaiC worth the bother is that it
doesn't handle SER: the brain-damaged way AmigaBasic does.  Not
having the patience yet to endure the

do {
	edit_text();
	compile_program();
	test_idea();
        }
while (1);

loop of developing a recent idea, i decided that it might be
quicker to work out the design in Basic.  Being a product of the
Video Genreation, I need to have immediate feedback.

What I was working out was a Midi librarian.  Mostly for personal
interest to see how to use wonderful system-exclusive stuff.  I
couldn't do it in AmigaBasic, since darn Amigabasic strips off
anything that ain't printable ASCII from strings going to SER:.
AmigaBasic aslo doesn't belive that baud rates higher than 9600
exist either.

ABasiC believes the baud rate set in Preferences.  I booted up
ABasic under KS/WB 1.2, and sure enuf, it worked.  I didn't try
absolutely everything since all I cared about was the serial port,
and I got my 31.5 Kbaud necessary for dealing with the midi
connection.  ABasic also keeps its grubby mits off the stuff you
are sending to the port.  The only glitch is that SER: queues up
blocks of 512 characters on incoming data.  If I get a chance, I'll
give the recently posted AUX: device a shot, since that is single
character oriented.

Once again, Microsoft proves it can write large buggy language
products :-).

--Bill