[Coco] Basic09

[L. Curtis Boyle]

On Mar 20, 2025, at 10:20 AM, Carlos Camacho via Coco <coco at maltedmedia.com> wrote:
> 
> Besides the OS9 manuals and the book by Dale Plunkett, any good books or
> articles on BASIC09 graphics and sound capabilities?

   Dale Puckett also did his OS9 series in Rainbow, which included quite a bit of BASIC09, including some fairly large scale projects. Definitely worth checking out.  Also, there is a fair bit of sourcecode for everything from games to utilities included in NitrOS9/EOU - see the /dd/sourcecode/basic09 directory and sub-directories. (Quick caveat - some of the sub-directories are DECODE’d de-PACKing works in progress).

> 
> I have a memory each command needs to be calling a graphic library. I think
> Curtis was slowly updating them.

Yes, we have a partial version of the new BASIC09 manual up on the EOU documentation website, which includes the expanded graphics chapter (chapter 9) up through the end of chapter 10. Chapters 11 and 12 are getting some updates and changes as well, and a new chapter 13 which includes some more specific tips and tricks as well as how to program in the Multi-Vue environment are being worked on, as well as bug-fixed and more useful sample programs. You can get the Chapters 1-10 preview from here:
  http://lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/EOUDOCS/Basic09_Reference_PREVIEW-Chapters1-10.pdf
> 
> Anyhow, any articles in Rainbow. Etc that comes to mind regarding graphics
> and sound? (And mouse control)

Dale does cover some of these in his Rainbow column, and there are multiple programs included in the EOU BASIC09 sourcecode I pointed to above that do all of that.
> 
> Yes. I'm looking at game dev with BASIC09.
> 
> Btw... I understand BASIC09 is like Pascal's pcode approach with virtual
> machine of sorts. (Icode?)

ICode is like a partially compiled code (James Jones can explain it far better than I), which is similar to PCode for Pascal. It has various types of loop constructs simllar to Pascal (and makes it much easier to program without line numbers), as well a various variable types including INTEGER which can run multiple times faster than REAL floating point, the latter of which is the only numeric variable type that Microsoft Extended BASIC has.

> 
> Why weren't there compilers for BASIC09? I know it runs fast and made
> especially for 6809, but surely compiling would result in faster programs
> than the Icode or whatever it's called.

   It’s partially compiled when you PACK your final programs (Save source first!). It gets rid of comments, line numbers and optimizes the code, but is then run through RUNB which is basically a run-time library of the various commands (GFX, GFX2, INKEY and SYSCALL are external libraries) which contain optimized code for processing the commands. There is no source left at this point, it’s compacted down to be smaller and faster.

> 
> 
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Carlos
> 
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