Matrix Brandy V1.23.3 released

Soruk

Hi,

I have released version 1.23.3 of Matrix Brandy.

Changes include:
- General: Implemented code tidy-ups recommended by OpenBSD. Thank you to Jag Talon for this!
- Build: Added build option -DBRANDY_NOVERCHECK to disable new version checking on startup.
- BASIC: Implemented EXIT FOR, EXIT REPEAT and EXIT WHILE, based on the extensions in Richard Russell's BB4W, BBCSDL, BBCTTY and BBCZ80v5.
- BASIC: Implement == to be synonymous with = in comparisons. Another compatility follow from Richard Russell's BASICs.
- BASIC: Allow DIM var LOCAL -1 outside of FN/PROC (as per BB4W, BBCSDL, BBCTTY and BBCZ80v5).
- BASIC: Implement BBCSDL's PLOT BY x,y (equivalent to PLOT 65,x,y), and equivalent to POINT BY x,y in ARM BASIC V.
- BASIC: WIDTH is now operational for GUI mode and the 'tbrandy' text-mode builds. Note that unlike RISC OS it affects almost ALL output (VDU excluded), including from built-in *-commands (but not external commands).

Source and binary downloads are available from the website, source is also available from GitHub.

Edit: Clarify WIDTH correctly does not affect VDU output.

Hated_moron

Soruk wrote: »

Note that unlike RISC OS it affects ALL output, including from built-in *-commands (but not external commands).

My testing suggests that it's not ALL output, because output using VDU isn't affected by WIDTH (which is of course correct).

Soruk

Yes, you are correct. The check is in the send-string-to-VDU function emulate_vdustr(), which is bypassed by direct VDU calls, but is used by emulate_printf() which is why it also affects internal *-commands such as *HELP, *BRANDYINFO and even *FX0, hence the comparison with RISC OS BBC BASIC where WIDTH has no effect on *-commands.

Hated_moron

Soruk wrote: »

hence the comparison with RISC OS BBC BASIC where WIDTH has no effect on *-commands.

I don't think you can really make a comparison because in RISC OS (or the BBC Micro for that matter) * commands are by definition executed by the (M)OS, not the Language, and since WIDTH is a language feature - indeed specific to BASIC as far as I know - it never sees them.

Exactly the same applies to COUNT, which is again a BASIC language feature. External star commands can't change the value of COUNT because the language never sees them at all. COUNT and WIDTH are inextricably linked, which is why I was so surprised to see one of them implemented in Matrix Brandy but not the other.

That's now fixed, but as you know WIDTH still isn't working properly; for example TAB(n) can misbehave when WIDTH is active (non-zero).

Soruk

I will investigate that one, thank you.

Soruk

Hopefully this is now fixed...