Re: GSBasic and more

[tolsen@netcom.com (Terry R. Olsen)]

Jay Krell (jmk3@crux4.cit.cornell.edu) wrote:
:  
: The thread made reference to TML and Morgan Davis.
: I do believe TML did ship a BASIC compiler. I don't know
: its capabilities, but don't think it is related to GSBasic.

Yes, TML did it's own BASIC, named conveniently enough "TML Basic".
I have the manual here on my desk.  It claims to be able to compile
GSBasic source without modification. It claims to be based on GSBasic
and the only major difference between TML Basic and GSBasic is that TML
is a compiled BASIC and GSBasic is Interpreted.

:  
: Morgan Davis still sells a cool product, I forget its name,
: that takes a BASIC dialect far superior to Applesoft, labels
: instead of line numbers, long variable names,
: I think procedures with parameters,
: imported libraries, and compiles it to highly optimized (highly
: unreadable) Applesoft. There is a cool demo on GEnie.
:

I have MD-Basic also.  It's very nice.  It can de-compile Applesoft source
into it's own format where you can modify and re-compile it into the
optimized Applesoft.  I use this de-compiler to help me convert Applesoft
source to Metal source.  Works nicely.
  
: I think it is called MD-Basic. It has its own desktop environment
: and also runs as a language under the ORCA shell and presumably GNO.
: (You just change its filetype to EXE or S16 to set how it runs.)

It has it's own Menu-Driven environment and editor.  The actual compiler and
de-compiler are EXE files and need not be changed to run in the ORCA shell.

You also mentioned Micol Advanced Basic.  I also have this (guess I'm a basic
fanatic).  The neat thing about Micol Basic is that it not only has full
toolbox access and can create stand-alone GSOS desktop applications and
Desk Accessories, but it can also compile un-modified Applesoft programs
into .SYS16 programs by adding a run-time library to the compiled code.
Granted a small Applesoft program such as "10 ? "Hello World":end" ends up
as a S16 file of 131k, it's still pretty neat.