Giga-Basic and E.A.S.E.

[dilwyn]

Thanks to Mr Navigator managing to make contact with the authors of Giga-Basic and E.A.S.E. (Easily Applicable System Environment) I have been able to make the software and manuals available to download from my website.

Giga-Basic provides over 70 commands and functions, making it a useful extension for the QL. Covers the areas of graphics, sprites, base conversion, full screen basic editor, direct access to medium, multitasking clocks, mouse driven screen orientated menus, pull-down menus, multitasking control commands, programmable function keys and so on. Download from http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/program/index.html

EASE: Also known as Giga-Desk, E.A.S.E. (or Easily Applicable System Environment) is a user interface for the QL, it supports a desktop environment, described by the original publisher as being "similar to GEM". It includes pulldown menus, icons, really scrollable windows, a calculator and a game. This program enables the user to have access to all system functions in an easy manner. Can be used with the Giga Soft Mouse originally sold by ABC Elektronic. http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/frontend/index.html

Both packages were originally sold by Giga-Soft and the authors are André Claaßen and Gerd-Uwe Neukamp

Also, if anyone has been trying without success todownload the latest version of Lear PCB-Design v7.34 on Graphics page, I have fixed the problem on the page now. Thanks to Ralf R for letting me know about this.

[vanpeebles]

That sounds very interesting. I keep meaning to try some of the various environments but never get round to it. I'll have a read of the pdfs over lunch

[Ralf R.]

Would be nice, if someone could try the SuperBASIC Editor of Giga-Basic and post a screenshot.

Would be interesting to know, how they have realised it. Must be similar to "ED".

As far as I know, there are just this one and "ED" of TK2.

[Mr_Navigator]

Screen (GIGABASIC's editor) is very similar to ED and looks identical when in editing mode, but it can be passed parameters as described thus:

• SCREEN #dev, linenr, tab

Default: SCREEN 11, 1, 3

This command enters the screen editor. It allows the user to edit BASIC programs in a way similar to QUILL. Unlike a normal ASCII-Editor all entered lines are syntactically checked by the interpreter.

Note: The interpreter will not accept lines after a program break if the functions and procedures are not reinitialized. This is possible by using the CLEAR command, which will produce the message 'PROC/DEF CLEARED'. After this message the work with the screen editor can go on.

Code: Select all

#dev:	window number to edit in
Linenr:	line number which will be displayed
Tab	first step size of the inbuilt tabulator

	The editor accepts the following key sequences:

Cursor Up
Cursor Down 
Cursor Right 
Cursor Left 
ESC					Leaves the editor
TABULATE 				Tabulator
SHIFT&ALT&UP 		Jumps to start of program
SHIPT&ALT&DOwN		Jumps to end of program
ALT&UP					Page up
ALT&DOWN 				Page down
CTRL&RIGHT				Deletes character under the cursor
CTRL&LEFT	Deletes character at the left of the cursor
CTRL&ALT&LEFT 		Clears basic line
CTRL&ALT&RIGHT		Deletes all characters at the right of the cursor
SHIFT&UP 				Jumps to the first line of the screen
SHIFT&DOWN				Jumps to the last line of the screen	
ALT&LEFT 				Jumps to start of line
ALT&RIGHT				Jumps to end of line	

[Mr_Navigator]

With the following code, you get the screen shot, pretty straight forward I think

Code: Select all

100 SPRDIM  :REMark Reserves space for the arrow
110 MENUDIM :REMark Allocates space for the pull-down-menu
120 :
130 MENU 0,0,1, "Addresses"
140 MENU 1,0,1, "Clear"
150 MENU 2,0,1, "Input"
160 MENU 3,0,1, "Edit"
170 :
180 MENU 0,1,1, "File"
190 MENU 1,1,1, "Load"
200 MENU 2,1,1, "Save"
210 :
220 MENU 0,2,1, "Exit"
230 MENU 1,2,1, "Reset"
240 MENU 2,7,1, "Basic"
250 :
260 SETMENU :REMark Clears the screen and shows the menu headline
270 :
280 GETMENU :REMark Shows the arrow and gets the menu point
290 x = HMENU
300 y = VMENU
310 :

[Ralf R.]

Ah, thank you. this looks similar to the "Pointer Environment" of the Graphics Toolkit from Pyramide.

Would be interesting to know, if the pointer is movable with a SerMouse. I fear it does not run on higher resolutions.

Any chance to get the source? (Dilwyn ?). I always wanted something easy of this kind for the PE, but noone has written such things. Even EasyPTR is overloaded for such simple things.

And now: Who was first? GigaBasic or TK2? (For the SB Editor)...

[dilwyn]

Ah, thank you. this looks similar to the "Pointer Environment" of the Graphics Toolkit from Pyramide.

Would be interesting to know, if the pointer is movable with a SerMouse. I fear it does not run on higher resolutions.

Any chance to get the source? (Dilwyn ?). I always wanted something easy of this kind for the PE, but noone has written such things. Even EasyPTR is overloaded for such simple things.

And now: Who was first? GigaBasic or TK2? (For the SB Editor)...

Source: Haven't got the sources. Contact with the authors was made by Mr Navigator. Might be worth a follow up request,perhaps?

I think TK2 came first (not 100% sure). Might be worth disassembling the editors with a keyword extraction tool like DEA, so study how the syntax checking etc works in Giga-Basic's SCREEN command.

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi,

I had a quick look at Giga-Basic in Disa, which looks like an assembly language programme, so could be disassembled and modified to work with SMSQ/E.

EASE is a QC Programme, so disassembling C programmes is hard

[Cristian]

Thanks to Mr Navigator managing to make contact with the authors of Giga-Basic and E.A.S.E. (Easily Applicable System Environment) I have been able to make the software and manuals available to dokwnload from my website.

Great! Good job

[RWAP]

This just shows why the QL Commercial Software Preservation project is so important (that is how E.A.S.E., GigaBasic and now GigaChrome came about) - and why more help is needed to track down the copyright holders

Just a further throw into the mix, Gigachrome has now also been made freeware