CompuServe Messages

Charles, Yes, you are SO right. I apologize for misunderstanding. You sound as though you are reasonably comfortable with Basic. Might I suggest, if you are not already aware, you pick up a copy of HiSoft Basic Pro? It's AmigaBasic compatible, is a compiled Basic, and has a tolerably better integrated editor than ABasic had. It is fully compatible with the 68010, 020, and 030 CPUs (don't know about the 040.) Since you already know AmigaBasic you won't have to "relearn" anything and you will have a Basic with several extensions that AmigaBasic didn't have. As I said, I don't know if you are aware of HiSoft Basic, but it's an excellent product, although it presently suffers from little apparent developer support. The version that is available hasn't changed in several years, but it's very stable. Rumor has it that the British company that developed it may come out with a new version, but I'm not holding my breath! If you "want" to learn a new language, but don't want to stray to far from Basic, you might try F-Basic. F-Basic is currently supported and most recently Version 5.0 was released. F-Basic is also a compiled basic. The integrated editor is usable, but not particularly good. F-Basic essentially is a hybrid. It has the ANSI Basic support, but the extensions to the language are more Pascal-like than Basic. It supports a RECORD variable and is strongly typed, like C. It has string manipulation routines which are drawn from SNOBOL and are extremely powerful. Compiled programs are relatively small and the language permits compiling separate modules. It is VERY fast rivaling C for execution speeds. It supports all CPUs up to the 040 and has full AGA support, supports an FPU, if available, and has excellent support of intuition and Amiga shared libraries. But it will present a learning curve since the language is not but about 60% "real" Basic. Since you're an engineer, I would presume that learning a programming language isn't too daunting a task! BTW there is a "fix" for AmigaBasic to make it work with the 020.