+hloberg Posted November 28, 2011 Share Posted November 28, 2011 Been wanting to play around with BASIC XE on my emulator but can't find a manual to it in English. The only manual I have found is in Italian. I have started translating the manual to English but before I get too far (it's a slow tedious process) I want to be sure there ISN'T already an OSS BASIC XE manual out there somewhere in English. Does anyone know of an OSS BASIC XE manual posted somewhere in English? thanks, HLO Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted November 29, 2011 Share Posted November 29, 2011 Seconded - been looking for this for the OSS documentation archive I'm supposed to be putting online. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+hloberg Posted November 29, 2011 Author Share Posted November 29, 2011 Seconded - been looking for this for the OSS documentation archive I'm supposed to be putting online. Well, since I have had no post to the contrary I am going to assume that there is NOT an English version of the book around. I don't know a lot of Italian (Spanish more) so i'm using Google translate which makes a context translation instead of a word for word translation. Does a really good job but it is a translation from another language so some of it doesn't make sense. I'm having to go in and re-type and test the parts that don't make sense. very slow going. Therefore, my booklet will not be exactly the English version of the book but my interpretation of the translation from Italian. What would help is if someone out there has a copy of the English XE manual so they could do some editing. I'm not holding my hopes though of that happening. BASIC XE wasn't a very big seller. No where near the success of BASIC XL. I'll post bits of it as I progress. HLO Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted November 29, 2011 Share Posted November 29, 2011 Seconded - been looking for this for the OSS documentation archive I'm supposed to be putting online. Well, since I have had no post to the contrary I am going to assume that there is NOT an English version of the book around. I don't know a lot of Italian (Spanish more) so i'm using Google translate which makes a context translation instead of a word for word translation. Does a really good job but it is a translation from another language so some of it doesn't make sense. I'm having to go in and re-type and test the parts that don't make sense. very slow going. Therefore, my booklet will not be exactly the English version of the book but my interpretation of the translation from Italian. What would help is if someone out there has a copy of the English XE manual so they could do some editing. I'm not holding my hopes though of that happening. BASIC XE wasn't a very big seller. No where near the success of BASIC XL. I'll post bits of it as I progress. HLO I will check my collection when I get home this evening. I know I don't have a printed copy, but maybe I picked up an electronic copy sometime over the past few decades. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+hloberg Posted November 29, 2011 Author Share Posted November 29, 2011 Actually I have been saying Italian. It's actually Polish, a language I know even less about. Anyway, here is the first of it. I plan to do about a command per day. that's all the time I have. should take two or three months. BASICXE polish to english.pdf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted November 29, 2011 Share Posted November 29, 2011 I will check my collection when I get home this evening. I know I don't have a printed copy, but maybe I picked up an electronic copy sometime over the past few decades. Well, I have nothing (Basic XL PDF, but that won't help). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+hloberg Posted November 30, 2011 Author Share Posted November 30, 2011 I will check my collection when I get home this evening. I know I don't have a printed copy, but maybe I picked up an electronic copy sometime over the past few decades. Well, I have nothing (Basic XL PDF, but that won't help). Your a genius! I forgot that 80-90% of BASIC XE is the same as BASIC XL. Even the manuals are the same. (I remember that when a friend of mine upgraded from BASIC XL to XE many years ago.) I can just cut and paste most of the XL manual to the XE manual! Just made this project a whole lot faster. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 Why not just divide the book into parts and get someone working on each one. I just had a look - I've got a .DOC version of the Polish manual - is the PDF version text copy/paste able, or is it only a scan? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+hloberg Posted November 30, 2011 Author Share Posted November 30, 2011 Why not just divide the book into parts and get someone working on each one. I just had a look - I've got a .DOC version of the Polish manual - is the PDF version text copy/paste able, or is it only a scan? thanks for the offer but now that I remembered that the two manuals are so close (They more than likely used the XL manual to create the XE manual) I'm zipping through at warp speed. Only parts that need translating now are to new commands. What I will need is for people to check it for accuracy when I'm done. Looking for commands I may have mis-interrupted or forgot the differences between the XL and XE. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 Glad I could help - I did not know they were mostly similar, as I have only ever used Turbo BASIC XL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 Great work! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+hloberg Posted November 30, 2011 Author Share Posted November 30, 2011 Glad I could help - I did not know they were mostly similar, as I have only ever used Turbo BASIC XL. Way back a friend of mine had a copy of BASIC XL and when BASIC XE came out he bought it and gave me the XL (wish I still had it). I remember us comparing the books and commenting how similar they were. There is only a few commands that are actually added to BASIC XE, the biggest being EXTEND. Side note: translating this stuff has convinced me of just how silly the concept of a universal translator (a.k.a. Star Trek) really is. Even though Google Translate does a great job of context translation the very way a Polish person speaks v. an American speaks make some of the translations down right confusing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+hloberg Posted November 30, 2011 Author Share Posted November 30, 2011 Great work! thanks. I'm almost 1/4 done. During the holidays it's real slow in my real estate business so I got a lot of time of my hands. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JAC! Posted December 1, 2011 Share Posted December 1, 2011 BASIC XE is approximately two to six times faster than the standard Atari BASIC and more than twice as fast as BASIC on the Commodore 64 or IBM PC Junior. Priceless :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+hloberg Posted December 1, 2011 Author Share Posted December 1, 2011 (edited) about 1/3 done. If you download it and find anything wrong, please let me know. Also, check out the EXTEND command. it gives a full 64k of programming space to a 130XE! PROJECT - BASICXE 12-1-11.pdf Edited December 1, 2011 by hloberg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UNIXcoffee928 Posted December 7, 2011 Share Posted December 7, 2011 A while back, I did a preliminary machine translation. I left the Polish in, and followed each text block with the English-ish translation. You can find it here. I had intended to work on it more, but never got around to it. Maybe it will save you a few keystrokes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted December 7, 2011 Share Posted December 7, 2011 The Polish is easier to follow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UNIXcoffee928 Posted December 7, 2011 Share Posted December 7, 2011 The Polish is easier to follow. Ha, yeah, I had addressed that, here. ERROR 138, LOL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+hloberg Posted December 9, 2011 Author Share Posted December 9, 2011 Got it, thanks. A nice thing about Google translate (which I am using) is that it does a context translation and makes a lot more since than a word for word translation. Anyway, I'm finding 95% of the book is the same as BASIC XL so I'm mostly doing a cut-n-paste from that book (which is in English). about 1/2 done now. One interesting thing about the Polish version; they are a lot more descriptive of each command than the English version. I guess OSS assumed the Polish were less accustom to programming than Americans. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted December 9, 2011 Share Posted December 9, 2011 (edited) Perhaps this is why the Polish are now such accomplished coders. Google translate has visibly improved over the past year or two alone. The only places it tends to fall down (understandably) is when it attempts to translate keywords or proprietary jargon. It also hates the leading periods of compiler directives (it usually attaches them to the end of the preceding word). Incredibly capable, though, on the whole. Edited December 9, 2011 by flashjazzcat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+hloberg Posted December 10, 2011 Author Share Posted December 10, 2011 Perhaps this is why the Polish are now such accomplished coders. LOL! that's probably true. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+hloberg Posted December 11, 2011 Author Share Posted December 11, 2011 Only the appendix is left to finish. Check out the new commands sortup/ssortdown and procedure/call/exit. those I had to use both google translate and bing translate. very tough and I'm still not satisfied that they make real good sense. comments are welcome. PROJECT - BASICXE.pdf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+hloberg Posted December 11, 2011 Author Share Posted December 11, 2011 Google translate has visibly improved over the past year or two alone. The only places it tends to fall down (understandably) is when it attempts to translate keywords or proprietary jargon. It also hates the leading periods of compiler directives (it usually attaches them to the end of the preceding word). I found that Bing translate is a little more forgiving of programming jargon and line numbers than google translate. Makes since, Bing is Microsoft. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted December 11, 2011 Share Posted December 11, 2011 Only the appendix is left to finish. Check out the new commands sortup/ssortdown and procedure/call/exit. those I had to use both google translate and bing translate. very tough and I'm still not satisfied that they make real good sense. comments are welcome. Great - gonna check this out. Would you have any objection to this being hosted at atari8.co.uk with all the other OSS manuals when it's done? I found that Bing translate is a little more forgiving of programming jargon and line numbers than google translate. Makes since, Bing is Microsoft. Hmmm... I might run the MADS manual through Bing's translator then and see how it comes out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+hloberg Posted December 11, 2011 Author Share Posted December 11, 2011 No problem. go ahead and post it. should be completely done in about a week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.