AppBasic

Joe, did you have any offers for this? I’d be happy to take it on if not, as I think AppBasic is great! Let me know…

AppBasic mailing list

If anyone would be interested in taking over the management of the list, I would be more than delighted to delegate this to them.

I’d be more than happy to set up an AppBasic mailing list at riscository.co.uk – just let me know (emailing me at vinceh at softrock co uk is probably a better choice; I can sometimes be a bit slow getting around to reading these forums, which I do on another device – and then usually forget to log in to comment on things when I switch to the laptop!)

Has anything come of this yet? I fear it’s too late to go into the Raspberry Pi distro, but I’d love to see AppBasic and DrawScript updated.

I guess nothing came of this then? Vince, what about the mailing list – still up for it? Or a forum somewhere would do fine.

I want to see this thing rescued. Can I help with something?

I’d forgotten all about this. I never saw an email from Joe in response to my comment – but since he did say in his February post here that he’d be happy for someone else to handle the list, I’ll set one up tonight.

In fact, I went ahead and set it up straight away, because I habitually forget to do things “tonight” (or even in ten minutes time).

AppBasic Mailing list

Does anyone know if/where AppBasic is downloadable from?

jettons.co.uk seems to have gone. I do hope that all the valuable work that Joe did is still available somewhere – it would be a great shame to lose it!

Does anyone know if/where AppBasic is downloadable from?
jettons.co.uk seems to have gone. I do hope that all the valuable work that Joe did is still available somewhere – it would be a great shame to lose it!

If all else fails: http://wayback.archive.org/web/20060208213840/http://www.jettons.co.uk/appbasic/downloads/index.html

I do hope that all the valuable work that Joe did is still available somewhere – it would be a great shame to lose it!

Totally agree! I’ve written quite a few apps using AppBasic including an auto-completion add-on for StrongED’s AppBasic mode.

Gavin Wraith is, I believe, still in touch with Joe perhaps he’d be willing to put the matter to Joe and see how he feels about AppBasic being made available elsewhere.

Ideally with the sources (and a new licence?) as I have a list of mostly minor issues but my attempts to contact Joe have all failed.

I am sorry to say that Joe is ill. I spoke to him on the phone earlier this year and he said he was quite happy that AppBasic should be used in any way that benefitted the RISC OS community. The wayback archive mentioned above has Appbasic version 2.02b. I have a copy of version 3.02b. I do not have the sources, however.

I am sorry to say that Joe is ill.

Given the repetition from the same comment last year(IIRC) that sounds rather “life limiting”
Life has a habit of doing these things.

I spoke to him on the phone earlier this year and he said he was quite happy that AppBasic should be used in any way that benefitted the RISC OS community. The wayback archive mentioned above has Appbasic version 2.02b. I have a copy of version 3.02b. I do not have the sources, however.

Perhaps you could prevail upon Joe to pass on the sources.

Was it really easy to use? Should the project be back again? Will Joe accept to give the source? Perhaps under an open source licence? Or with a share of financial benefits (why not…)?

The interesting point with AppBasic is that it seems that a lot of people really made a lot of software with it. And software ecosystem is really an important point.

Perhaps you could prevail upon Joe to pass on the sources.

I asked Joe about the sources this morning, on the telephone. He said that in principle he would be happy to, but that at present he is simply not able to, for medical reasons. He is suffering from neuralgia; not fatal, but debilitating; he has to take drugs that slow up his nervous system and which cause great fatigue. He cannot even speak for more than a few minutes at a time. It is many months since he last used his computer. Also he is worried that he would not be able to respond adequately to the many enquiries that anybody with the sources to AppBasic would be bound to make.

So I do not think it is polite to press this matter right now. There is an operation, but it is usually kept as a last resort. We must all be patient.
It is a tragedy because Joe loves programming, and he has put a great deal into AppBasic over the years.

He is suffering from neuralgia; not fatal, but debilitating; he has to take drugs that slow up his nervous system and which cause great fatigue. He cannot even speak for more than a few minutes at a time.

Glad to hear it isn’t bad news, just bad news.
My familiarity with health regulations stops me from enquiring.
That bit is “career limiting” as the saying goes. Caldecott guidelines etc.

I am sorry to hear about Joe and can only wish him well. He did a presentation of AppBasic at a now long defunct RISC OS User Group at Harold Wood in Essex.

His sites are DrawScript and AppBasic, unfortunately AppBasic’s downloads directory is missing.

The latest AppBasic I have is 3.02 (29-Nov-07). And I have the download zip.

I, too, am interested in the future of DrawScript which I have used many times to produce material for Open Uni. Mathematics tutorials. It works on my Iyonix and Pandaboard (I haven’t tried it on my Beagleboard or Raspberry-Pi); but, oddly, if I double-click on !RunM or the DrawScript module, I get the “application may have gone wrong ….” error and then clicking on “Describe” it says “Module ‘DrawScript’ is not 32-bit compatible”. This is for both machines, yet it still works. :-)

‘DrawScript’ is not 32-bit compatible”. This is for both machines, yet it still works. :-)

The main !Run file in the application doesn’t RMEnsure the Drawscript module -I haven’t dug through anything else to find out the effects or whether some obscure function calls for it.

The drawscript module has three instances of Rick Murrays favourite instruction¹ (or it’s close cousin)

LDMFD R13!,{R0,PC}^ ; CAUTION: not 32bit safe (uses PSR). Function exit, Ends
LDMFD R13!,{R0,PC}^ ; CAUTION: not 32bit safe (uses PSR). Function exit, Ends
LDMFD R13!,{R0-R3,PC}^ ; CAUTION: not 32bit safe (uses PSR). Function exit, Ends

For anyone interested it’s the return from the Initialisation routine, the return from the Finalisation routine and the return from the Service call handler that need the offending instruction removing and replacing with something more 21st century.

The application just plain crashes on RPCEmu RO5.21 05-Mar-14 so I’d put the “still works” down as “unstable, may do unpredictable things”, so maybe the module not loading is helpful in that it doesn’t make things worse.

¹ Off to Aldershot for the explanation of that one.

Drawscript works fine on my Raspberry Pi. The module says it is DrawScript 1.00 (10 Jan 2012). It is 32-bit safe. I cannot remember whether I did the 32-bit sanitizing for it or not. If I did I guess I ought to have put a comment in to say so, but there you go. If anyone wants a copy of it give me a shout.

Drawscript works fine on my Raspberry Pi. The module says it is DrawScript 1.00 (10 Jan 2012). It is 32-bit safe. I cannot remember whether I did the 32-bit sanitizing for it or not. If I did I guess I ought to have put a comment in to say so, but there you go. If anyone wants a copy of it give me a shout.

The version on the web site contains v1.10 9th Dec 1992.

Version problem…

BTW. I have to disagree about the downloads directory on the linked AppBASIC site. The downloads directory is there with content.

I hope people realize that the Drawscript module is only there to put a directory called DrawScript into Resources:$.ThirdParty, containing the application !Throw, Basic programs Error, Run and SendToDraw and a directory called Resources. The latter contains only Basic programs and a directory, Frames, containing only Basic programs. This was a technique Joe liked to use. Essentially everything is in Basic so 32-bit problems are rather spurious in this case, arising only from the module used to hoist stuff into ResourceFS. My suspicion is that v1.10 only differs from the original v1.00 in how much it hoists.

DrawScript – The Module which is 26bit is an irrelevance, it contains a obsolete ResourcesFS image that would appear in the ‘Third Party’ directory in Resources: on the iconbar. The active code is in the ‘Third Party’ directory within !DrawScrpt. DrawScript works on my Pi if ARMv5 mode is selected.

BTW. I have to disagree about the downloads directory on the linked AppBASIC site. The downloads directory is there with content.

http://www3.mistral.co.uk/joe_taylor/appbasic/downloads/index.html 404s. A wget confirms the directory to be missing.

http://www3.mistral.co.uk/joe_taylor/appbasic/downloads/index.html 404s. A wget confirms the directory to be missing.

Damn, I clicked on my saved link to http://appbasic.jettons.co.uk/ instead of the quoted link.

Is there a way of using DrawScript commands within a Basic program? I am wanting the best of two worlds within one program: To have graphical output to go to a Draw file, but some text output (mainly a load of real numbers) to go to a text window of an editor and then save both. I know some inelegant solutions including one involving *Spool. I know the text output can go to the draw file using DrawScript, but there can be a huge number of real numbers and so I would rather save them separately.