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Topic: What to do about the Android edition? (Read 884 times) |
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barryem
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Re: What to do about the Android edition?
« Reply #10 on: Jan 1st, 2018, 5:37pm » |
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Somehow I managed to miss the adding new programs part of the Touch IDE page. I'll read that and give it a try.
As for ARM assembly I have no real reason for using it, or X86 assembly either. I'm looking at BBC for Android as something to play with. I do have some X86 tablets, also. I've done a lot of X86 assembly, although none in the past decade or two so it'll probably be nearly as alien to me as ARM assembly, which I've never done. It might be fun to learn a bit of it just to see what RISC programming is about. Does the term RISC still apply?
My question about BBC4W help files was just a general one. I try to avoid installing software without a reason. If the help will give me a fairly good guide for the basics it'll be worth it to me.
My experience with BBC4W is very small. I wrote a few simple games a few years ago in it for use in the community room of my retirement home. They were very simple.
Anyway, thank you for creating this. I'm going to have some fun with it. I'm already having some fun with it. It's a very nice toy and it kind of looks like with a more sophisticated interface it might be a money maker. I'm surprised you aren't doing that, or is that your plan?
I played around a couple of years ago with Mintoris Basic on Android, another nice tool. His focus in his forum is strictly on advanced programming. I wonder if a language like this might have more success if there was a focus on user written games and tools, made available in a free app store within the interface itself. Then people could buy the program, run the games and programs others have written and have a lot of fun and maybe even learn to program it.
By the way, i did install this on my 7" Amazon Fire tablet, the current model, and mostly it ran just fine. On one of the games, Dibbly, when I ran the demo, near the end of the demo I got a Number too big error. The same thing happened on my Asus ME173. It worked fine on my Galaxy Tab A, which has Android 7. The others run Android 4.2. I'm not sure if that matters but it might be useful to you. If you want me to run any kind of test to help you pinpoint the problem I'll be happy to. The Fire tablet is $50 in the USA and often goes on sale for $40 or even $30.
Ebay has an Asus ME173 for $35 in the USA. It's an old, now slow tablet that's fairly useless these days so they probably can be had for even less with a bit of shopping. I had 2 of them and recently sold my other one for $3. 
Barry
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Richard Russell
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Re: What to do about the Android edition?
« Reply #11 on: Jan 1st, 2018, 6:12pm » |
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on Jan 1st, 2018, 5:37pm, barryem wrote:| I got a Number too big error.... Android 4.2. |
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I believe that's a known Android bug (in the C run-time library), and not anything to do with BBC BASIC. As you have found, it's fixed in more recent versions.
Richard.
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roy
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Re: What to do about the Android edition?
« Reply #12 on: Jan 22nd, 2018, 07:51am » |
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wow Richard, this as come a long way since I last looked at it. Now works good on my new and old tablets.
In the demos 2 apps give the number to big error and Touchide.bbc didn't run.
I thought the number to big error may be cause with not enough memory on my device.
I typed in my own short app and it runs well.
Well done.
Regards Roy
edit: Just had another go with the demos and it is just my old tablet the gives the number to big error.
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| « Last Edit: Jan 22nd, 2018, 08:09am by roy » |
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Richard Russell
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Re: What to do about the Android edition?
« Reply #13 on: Jan 22nd, 2018, 08:20am » |
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on Jan 22nd, 2018, 07:51am, roy wrote:| 2 apps give the number to big error |
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Which ones, and what do you need to do to provoke the error? Where does the error occur (you may need to make a copy of the program and add line numbers to find out)?
Quote:| and Touchide.bbc didn't run. |
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It must have - it's the program that runs initially when you open the app, and to which it returns when you exit each of the demos. If you run it 'manually' - which really there's little point in doing - you may not see much difference (because it's the program that you were running anyway) but it certainly should run.
I think this is quite well known, but to emphasise: BBCSDL contains no integrated IDE, it's just the interpreter. Its native interface is simply 'immediate mode', as with most other versions of BBC BASIC (e.g. on the BBC Micro, Acorn Archimedes, MS-DOS etc.). The only reason you see anything different is because it's automatically running a BASIC program (touchide.bbc in the case of the Android edition, bbcsdl.bbc when running on a desktop).
Try running 'touchide.bbc' on a desktop platform, like Windows, to see it in that environment (you can operate it with a mouse).
Richard.
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roy
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Re: What to do about the Android edition?
« Reply #14 on: Jan 24th, 2018, 12:44pm » |
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on Jan 22nd, 2018, 08:20am, Richard Russell wrote:Which ones, and what do you need to do to provoke the error? Where does the error occur (you may need to make a copy of the program and add line numbers to find out)?
It must have - it's the program that runs initially when you open the app, and to which it returns when you exit each of the demos. If you run it 'manually' - which really there's little point in doing - you may not see much difference (because it's the program that you were running anyway) but it certainly should run.
I think this is quite well known, but to emphasise: BBCSDL contains no integrated IDE, it's just the interpreter. Its native interface is simply 'immediate mode', as with most other versions of BBC BASIC (e.g. on the BBC Micro, Acorn Archimedes, MS-DOS etc.). The only reason you see anything different is because it's automatically running a BASIC program (touchide.bbc in the case of the Android edition, bbcsdl.bbc when running on a desktop).
Try running 'touchide.bbc' on a desktop platform, like Windows, to see it in that environment (you can operate it with a mouse).
Richard.
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Hi Richard
digdemo gives the error when it fist runs. I added line numbers but it didn't say what line the error occurred at.
just:
Number too big in module
This is on my old Lenovo android 4.2.2
All works fine on my new RCA Android 6.0
RegardsRoy
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Richard Russell
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Re: What to do about the Android edition?
« Reply #15 on: Jan 24th, 2018, 1:06pm » |
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on Jan 24th, 2018, 12:44pm, roy wrote:This is on my old Lenovo android 4.2.2
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Early versions of Android have a numeric bug in their C Run Time Library so I would guess that's the cause. If so it's out of my hands.
Richard.
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