BBC BASIC on RISC OS — The Distillery

Legibility!

Hated_moron — Sat, 09 Nov 2024 22:53:41 +0000

This is the menu page from the Windows version of Joop. I find it barely legible: I can just about make out 'Start Game' and 'Quit' but what is the last word? Is the Archimedes / RISC OS version any clearer?

RISC OS sketchpad program

[Richard Russell] — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 17:44:56 +0000

On page 70 of the RISC OS BBC BASIC Reference Manual this program is listed, which "draws lines as
you move the mouse around and hold down its buttons":

 10 MODE MODE
 20 MOVE 0,0
 30 REPEAT
 40   MOUSE x,y,button
 50   GCOL button + 1
 40   DRAW x,y
 50 UNTIL FALSE

I don't understand how this program is supposed to work. If no mouse buttons are pressed button is (presumably) set to zero, and line 50 will then do a GCOL 1. Surely that will cause a line to be drawn, when it shouldn't be. Or have I misunderstood something?

LOCAL variable limitation

[Richard Russell] — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 17:12:54 +0000

In the RISC OS BBC BASIC Reference Manual (page 326) it states "After a local array has been dimensioned, no additional local variables can be declared in that procedure or function" and indeed that seems to be true. It's not the case for my BASICs or Matrix Brandy, so this must be a limitation specific to ARM BASIC that I wasn't previously aware of.