Any ATARI BASIC editor?

[Fabrizio Caruso]

I am coding a 10-liner in Atari BASIC but I cannot copy paste small characters/inverse/small inverse characters onto Altirra or any other emulator.

What should I use to edit a BASIC program on the PC in a way that can be transferred on to an emulator?

I have tried Memo Pad but its files cannot be opened by Altirra or I don't know how to open them.

Altirra cannot even import simple plain small letters by copy/paste without converting them into capital letters.

[777ismyname]

There is no problem pasting lowercase from MemoPad to Altirra. You just need to press your Caps Lock key inside of Altirra and lowercase pastes fine.

 

MemoPad does a great job of displaying ATASCII characters and inverse characters...but I do not have any idea of how to transfer them to Altirra, either.

 

I have not played with it any, but Turban looks to be a good way of developing TBXL BASIC stuff on a Windows or Mac machine.

 

Is there an issue of simply using Altirra itself to enter the ATASCII characters, especially since it is only 10 lines? Elsewise you may write the ATASCII data to a string, save to disk, and import them that way.

 

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

[777ismyname]

Oops, I just remembered ATASCIIPad. It is on Gury's site or Atarimania

 

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

[Fabrizio Caruso]

Memopad and ATASCIIPad do not export to .bas or .xex or even to anything that can be copy/pasted or read by Altirra.
Altirra copy/paste is half-broken because it cannot even import small letters which should be preserved when pasting...
Inverse and inverse/small characters are also lost but those would need to be treated differently and there is no standard notation.

I am coding and debugging on a PC and I run the code into an emulator. I cannot edit lines each time I change my code.
I need to use inverse, small and inverse/small characters inside of strings (no chr$) to reduce code size for my 10-liner.

[baktra]

The MEMOPAD editor can save as ATASCII.

Of course it cannot save as tokenized basic (because it is a text editor, not a tokenizer), but it can save source code. The source code can still be used with Altirra.

 

1. Setup Altirra to emulate a hard drive (H1:) using a directory e.g. C:\ATARI\MYBASIC
2. Using MEMOPAD, edit your text and save as ATASCII to the MYBASIC folder. E.g. C:\ATARI\MYBASIC\MYPROG.LB. Of course, you must configure MEMOPAD to use ATASCII end of line. See the View menu.

 

In Altirra, use the following BASIC statement to load the file:

ENTER "H1:MYPROG.LB"

 

Note the .LB extension. BAS is for tokenized BASIC, .LB is for source code (List Basic).

Edited February 20, 2019 by baktra

[dmsc]

Hi,

 

I am coding a 10-liner in Atari BASIC but I cannot copy paste small characters/inverse/small inverse characters onto Altirra or any other emulator.

 

What should I use to edit a BASIC program on the PC in a way that can be transferred on to an emulator?

 

I have tried Memo Pad but its files cannot be opened by Altirra or I don't know how to open them.

 

Altirra cannot even import simple plain small letters by copy/paste without converting them into capital letters.

You can use my basic parser tool: https://github.com/dmsc/tbxl-parser

 

Just edit in notepad++ (or other code editor) and the tool will write a "minimized" source, adding line numbers and abbreviations as needed. The tool supports TurboBasic XL (a very common enhanced basic for the Atari), but if you write in standard basic the generated code will be 100% compatible with Atari BASIC (as TurboBasic XL is an strict super-set).

[Fabrizio Caruso]

How can I edit inverse and inverse small characters with Notepad++? What does your parser expect for an inverse character? Which notation?

I already use Notepad++ and simply copy/paste my code onto Altirra but Altirra converts small letters and does not understand inverse chars.

[Xuel]

How can I edit inverse and inverse small characters with Notepad++? What does your parser expect for an inverse character? Which notation?

I already use Notepad++ and simply copy/paste my code onto Altirra but Altirra converts small letters and does not understand inverse chars.

Documentation excerpt:

Inside strings, special characters can be specified by using a backslash followed by an hexadecimal number in upper-case, (i.e., "\00\A0" produces a string with a "hearth" and an inverse space), this allows editing special characters on any ASCII editor. Note that to force a backslash before a valid hex number, you can use two backslashes (i.e., "123\\456" produces123\456).

You can find an ATASCII to hex table here:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATASCII

[Fabrizio Caruso]

@Xuel Thanks, I cannot use the mapping you propose. There is no hearth character in graphic mode 1.
I need to type inverse, small and inverse/small characters, which have a different mapping.
I can figure it out, maybe. I use graphic mode 1+16 which only has 64 atascii characters that reapet 4 times. This is rendered in Atari BASIC by inverse, small and inverse small characters which make it very clear that you are using a different color. Inverse, small and inverse small are use to mark color leaving the text readable.
Using a list of hexadecimal digits instead of "colored" text, makes it totally unreadable but I can leave with it if there is no better option.

That is why I asked for an editor that includes what you would normally see in Atari BASIC.

[Irgendwer]

I have tried Memo Pad but its files cannot be opened by Altirra or I don't know how to open them.

 

You could just save the text with Memo pad and the ATASCII end-of-line setting to an "H:" drive and load this by the "ENTER" command.

 

"ENTER "H:MYTEXT.LST" "

 

For setting up the H: drive:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/260421-altirra-question-saving-to-hard-drive/?do=findComment&comment=3658983

[dmsc]

Hi!

 

@Xuel Thanks, I cannot use the mapping you propose. There is no hearth character in graphic mode 1.

I need to type inverse, small and inverse/small characters, which have a different mapping.

You are probably confused, as in BASC you type a heart characer. Yes, when you print it in GR.1 it prints as a space, but it is entered as a heart. See (with a better example character):

 

 

I can figure it out, maybe. I use graphic mode 1+16 which only has 64 atascii characters that reapet 4 times. This is rendered in Atari BASIC by inverse, small and inverse small characters which make it very clear that you are using a different color. Inverse, small and inverse small are use to mark color leaving the text readable.

Yes, but that only works for letters. As I show you above, for numbers and symbols, you need to use control characters.

 

Using a list of hexadecimal digits instead of "colored" text, makes it totally unreadable but I can leave with it if there is no better option.

 

That is why I asked for an editor that includes what you would normally see in Atari BASIC.

The parser also allows to enter as:

 

graphics 1
? #6 ; [" COLOR ~COLOR~ color ~color~ "];

It transforms that to: