Re: Applesoft Basic IDE

[dalloff@gcfn.org (Dave Althoff Jr)]

Eric (lonewolf@hotmail.com) wrote:
: Hi,

: Can anyone recommend me a good equivalent "IDE" for Applesoft Basic
: programming on Apple IIe? I have downloaded and tried Beagle's GPLE. But I
: don't have the doc. I don't even know how to renumber the line number. There
: may be other/better "IDE". I would also appreciate if you can recommend a
: Basic compiler.

Personally, I swore by GPLE and swore at Program Writer.

The nice thing about GPLE is that unless you're fiddling around with the
KSW/CSW vectors or other useful hooks, it is transparent to the programmer
until you need it.

I used to use GPLE all the time (and PLE before it!) but got out of that
habit when I started doing programs that all started with...

1 TEXT:HOME:PRINT:PRINT CHR$(4);"PR#3":PRINT:PRINT:HOME

That one line of code would, of course, effectively kill GPLE, as PR# resets
the CSW and KSW vectors.  I found that to be a bit annoying...but a nice
feature of GPLE is that RESET would re-hook GPLE and set the 80-column
screen.  GPLE provided some effective fixes for some Apple programming
environment glitches (PLE, for instance, enabled Esc-IJKM screen movement
on an Apple ][; GPLE fixed text copying over inverse characters on a ][e).
 It just takes some discipline to keep from disconnecting it.

I did find a bug in GPLE, though...not really a bug, but a program
interaction problem.  It seems that running GPLE with certain accelerated
versions of DOS 3.3 on an 80-column screen will blow up the CATALOG
command so that you get the header ("DISK VOLUME 254") but no file
listing.  I don't remember if this was under Pronto-DOS or something else.
 It worked fine under 'clean' DOS 3.3, and it always worked fine on the
40-column screen.

--Dave Althoff, ][.
  Applesoft Ace since circa. 1982...
-- 
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