Boriel Basic Forum - Documentation

404 page not found

Sun, 26 Feb 2023 19:18:31 +0000

This page does not exist:

https://zxbasic.readthedocs.io/en/latest/library/point/

First public release of ZX BASIC

Wed, 18 Jan 2023 16:57:58 +0000

When was the first public release of ZX BASIC?
2010?

https://zxbasic.readthedocs.io down?

Thu, 10 Jun 2021 20:04:02 +0000

Hi

Not sure if this is the best place to report this but https://zxbasic.readthedocs.io/ seems to be not working?

Documentation frequently offline

Wed, 13 Jan 2021 12:01:26 +0000

Hi,

I have been frequently referring to the ZX Basic documentation while I have been programming. I find that at random (but multiple times a day) the search feature on the wiki returns no results for a short period which is quite frustrating. It's happened again right now. During though outages, luckily I can consult the markdown files on GitHub. However, they don't have a search function, which is useful so I do prefer the wiki.

I also notice that the boriel.com landing site frequently drops off the Internet late at night too. Can you perhaps set up some kind of host monitoring to determine just how big a problem this is, or maybe raise a support ticket with the webhost?

Thanks,

Patters

Undocumented continuation line syntax?

Tue, 09 Jul 2013 15:12:29 +0000

Hello, everyone! First time poster here.

While working on my second ZXBasic game, I accidentally discovered a syntax feature I can't seem to find documented anywhere.

Namely, a backslash at the end of a line causes it to be concatenated with the next one. That also works inside a comment, in which case the next line is "eaten up". That's more or less like in C, if I remember correctly, but in ZXBasic it surprised me because the wiki only mentions the underscore as a continuation line.

Is there anything I missed?

Double Size Print

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 01:19:20 +0000

You know, I've focused so much on making itty bitty unreadable text, that it was time to make up the balance.

A whole evening poking in assembly, and it's 143 bytes? Heck, I'm slow!

Anyway - Double sized printing. Including UDG.

http://www.boriel.com/wiki/en/index.php ... ePrint.bas

No colour. That's what windowPaint - http://www.boriel.com/wiki/en/index.php ... indowPaint - is for!

(Yes, I also added this - though it's solidly based on the paint routine packaged with putChars)

clearbox

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 01:30:35 +0000

I've added a partial clear screen routine (clearBox.bas) to the library. It does what it says - clears a defined rectangle of the screen. Good for clearing out the bits you don't want, such as the game board, but leave the status bit alone.

http://www.boriel.com/wiki/en/index.php ... C:ClearBox

Sprinter 2000 Bios 2.12 Documentation

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:02:42 +0000

Yesterday I found a old printout of the Sprinter 2000 BIOS 2.12 functions, I did the printout before the site folded. Unfortunaly the Informations are not available anywhere else on the Internet, so I scanned them to DJVU format and even if it looks like some thing was cropped out, I think, this informations will be very useful for making a Sprinter Target in ZXBC. So I uploaded it here:
http://min.us/mbk23elfOF
I do not have BIOS 3.0 functions...
I used DJVU because it produces files in size on 1/10 of PDF at much higher quality.
A very good reader for DJVU format can be downloaded here:
http://code.google.com/p/windjview-subpix/

Librarys corrections to do

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:31:23 +0000

Hi Boriel, I currently make the ZXBC library helper for BorIDE and found some errors:
LCase.bas

Quote:----------------------------------------------------------------
' function LCase(s as String)
'
' Parameters:
' s: Input String
'
' Returns:
' A copy of S converted to UpperCase
' ----------------------------------------------------------------

It should be:

Quote:' Returns:
' A copy of S converted to LowerCase

Next what I do not understand: in Key Library you wrote about scancodes such as:

Quote:SC_ENTER or SC_SPACE

But the key definitions are more like:

Quote:KEYENTER or KEYSPACE

Other:
In the Scroll Lib the SUB for scrolling up and down is named in both cases ScrollLeft. And it is written scrolling by pyxel, which is wrong and should be called pixel (PIcture ELement).

Writing Docs for the Fourspriter will be a pain... But also the core commands await me.
FIY: I changed the help system. Now it can display a HTML-Page, which includes a newly designed BorIDE Logo and styled text.

Updates

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 02:36:21 +0000

I inserted documentation for

INK
PAPER
BORDER
INVERSE
BOLD
ITALIC

I added (Library Function) Input to the list, and changed CSRLIN and POS into versions that show they are (Library Functions) not inherently reserved words.

I then added INPUT and INKEY.

The complex page about DIM

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 23:17:38 +0000

I've rearranged the DIM page. It is the most complex page I've seen in the wiki.There were double contents here and there, and no clear order. It seems text was pasted from different sources several times. I tried to reorganize the whole into two subheaders (variables and arrays). I think now the order is clearer, and there are no redundant contents. I linked to the mentioned command line options, and to the pragma page (that doesn't exist yet).

May someone take a look and see, if something is missing or wrong in the contents, the order or the headers? Thank you.

Suggestion about the functions and the brackets

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 16:52:14 +0000

I suggest to always use brackets with functions, both in the Syntax and Examples sections, and everywhere in the docs.

I suggest to include a note in the language reference page in order to explain that brackets are optional in functions for the sake of compatibility with Sinclair BASIC (and maybe FreeBASIC in some cases). But that's all.

I think the code is much more clear with brackets; they help to avoid bugs too. And it's the standard beside a good practice, isn't it? On the other hand, it's good to have a clear convention to write the docs.

Suggestion for the Syntax section

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 16:42:26 +0000

Hi all,

I've been thinking how to simplify and homogenize the docs; and also how to make them easier to create and mantain.

I'm preparing a list of detailed suggestions for your consideration, but the first one is ready:

I suggest for the Syntax section:

to use . I think it's easier to write and to read, and it looks nicer and more clear. The current combination of bold and italic is not comfortable to edit (besides, I think their Mediawiki notation is unhandy and hard to read).
to show syntax variants simply one after another, without "or" or any kind of comment; simply one line of code per variant (no need to mark optional parameters). No text in the section, only clear code with proper parameter names.
to use lowercase (it's a fact it's easier to read and to write) for everything (keywords and parameters).
to use camelCase for parameters with compound names (they cannot be reserved words anymore, because of ).

You can see and example in the peek page I just rearranged. Note I left both syntax layouts for you to compare. Also the rest of the page is changed to illustrate some of my future suggestions.

First version of RND

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 15:49:00 +0000

I've just created the first version of RND. The remarks are adapted from a recent message of boriel, and the examples are taken from FreeBASIC.

First draft of FOR...NEXT

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:46:23 +0000

I created the first draft of the FOR...NEXT page.