BASIC-256

simple and straight forward to use

I just built basic256_0.9.6.69 from source in Mandriva 2010 Linux and found that once certain changes were made, it built very cleanly and does much or most of what a hobbyist or student would like a Basic to do. I've used Commodore Basic, GW-Basic, QBasic and have at least a slight exposure to other versions, and must say that Basic256 running in a graphic window feels good to use. I had one actual problem building it. The file SDL_mixer.h, a sound-related file, was called for and I don't seem to have it. Also, the sound on my system doesn't work anyway. So I had to make some changes to the source and the Makefile to clear up the missing-file error. This amounts to removing sound support for the program, which I found just now was requested by a user a couple of years ago. It can be done without drastic changes. In Unix/Linux, making these changes is usually done by a script called configure which is included in the source files that checks for required and desired stuff on a user's system. It also accepts commands on enabling or disabling features. To use it, one would need a Unix-like programming environment like the one provided by MSYS and the mingw compiler for Windows. Some of the Basic programming I enjoy doing is math-related and I like to have full double-precision numbers to look at. It took a bit of digging to find what to change to get the nearly full 15 digits by default instead of the 6 shown by the original source, but it's working now. I'd like the interpreter to be able to handle scientific format numbers in input and output, and may try adding that too. One other feature I would add to the Basic256 wish list is to include modern structured programming statements (case statements, etc). Even so, it does about as much as the Commodore 64 Basic I had years of fun with, and because the source for Basic256 is in C++, one of the most common and widely documented programming languages, it's easy to modify and add to. Testing and contributing are some of the fun things you can do with open-source code.

Easy enough.