[Coco] [Color Computer] Re: Let me introduce myself

[R. Flowers]

--- In ColorComputer at yahoogroups.com, "James the Animal Tamer" wrote:
> > > In a fair comparison, the Commodore should do just
> > > as well as the 
> > > CoCo.  Commodore BASIC is Microsoft version 2 BASIC
> > > -- the only 
> > > differences I can think of at the moment is that the
> > > INKEY$ keyword got 
> > > replaced with something else, and EXEC got replaced
> > > with SYS.
> > > 
> > > 
> > I don't know... IIRC, most C64 BASIC listings were
> > full of "special characters" that you got through
> > various key combinations. Remember all those graphics
> > characters on the sides of the keys?
> 
> Indeed I do.  That's why I said that in a fiar comparison, the 
> Commodore should do just as well as a CoCo.  As you recall about 
the 
> CoCo, some games written in BASIC used PRINT to place the quarter-
> character graphics blocks.  Tie, eh?
>

I'll concede somewhat, but not a tie. :)

I don't intend to be argumentative, but in many instances those 
characters (on the C-64) were typed in directly from the keyboard 
into the listing, usually in the form of PRINT "#####>>>>>>Hello!" 
(where # = 'cursor down' and > = 'cursor right') for example. Just 
trying converting that listing to plain text for the conversion 
would be problematic.

In the CoCo, usually the special characters where printed like this: 
PRINT CHR$(133) or some such. At least it would not choke most BASIC 
parsers. Sure, every once in a while you would find special 
characters inserted directly into a string, but this was almost 
always found in prerecorded software (on tape or disk), the result 
of another routing POKEing the characters in there.

However, if a BASIC program confined itself to ASCII characters < 
128, then I think Commodore's and CoCo's BASICS would compare in 
this regard (conversion to GWBASIC, etc.)





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