BBC BASIC, Anyone spoken with Richard Russell?

(I note with interest the recent switch to an Apache style license.)

Have there been any approaches (possibly informal) made to Richard Russell about the incorporation of functionality from the BBCSDL Interpreter back into the ARM BASIC in RISC OS, assuming the licenses are compatible? Or alternatively on backporting BBCSDL to RISC OS as an alternative to the ARM BASIC supplied by default.

(BBCSDL had an updated source release recently, https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=15927&p=219444#p219444 and https://www.dropbox.com/s/hsfhf0litkol53o/BBCSDLsrc.zip?dl=0 ) and it would be something if Mr Russel’s extensive efforts and extensions were recognised in RISC OS.

Needs to be adapted from SDL 2 to SDL 1.2, but nothing impossible.

No SDL 2 under RISC OS?

SDL 1.2 is 2D framebuffer-based. SDL 2 is 3D and designed for a GPU, and quite different. Since RISC OS has minimal GPU support, it doesn’t translate well. I don’t know if there are software renderers that SDL 2 could use, but generally running anything that’s expecting a GPU isn’t going to be pleasant.

An update – BBC BASIC for SDL 2.0 also had a release on GitHub – using a zlib style license.

https://github.com/rtrussell/BBCSDL

I would encourage any that’s interested to take a look, as there are some useful features in Richard T. Russel’s implementation, that would be useful to have RISC OS 5’s implementation of ARM BASIC V.

Richard Russell’s BBC BASIC is really good, it would be cool to be able to use it on RISC OS.
It’s quite different from ARM BASIC V, so I like to call it RRPL (Richard Russell Programming Language) to distinguish it from classic Acorn BBC BASIC. For example if a program uses features found only in Richard Russell’s BBC BASIC, I think of it as an RRPL program.

I don’t mean to suggest that RRPL isn’t BBC BASIC, it’s just the way I think of it to avoid confusion.

Anyway, I hope that RRPL will eventually be brought to RISC OS.