BBC BASIC
« IDE / Editor / Interpreter architecture »
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Cross-platform BBC BASIC (Windows, Linux x86, Mac OS-X, Android, iOS, Raspberry Pi)
IDE / Editor / Interpreter architecture
« Thread started on: Jan 7th, 2016, 2:02pm »
I've substantially succeeded in porting my IA-32 BBC BASIC interpreter to Android (86), using SDL2. There are several features that don't work (or don't work correctly) but they are not critical. However there's no IDE - not even a simple program editor - so there's currently no way of entering, editing or debugging BBC BASIC programs! Effectively it is useless.
I don't currently have any idea how to incorporate an IDE on Android. On Windows, Linux and MacOS it's (relatively) straightforward: the IDE or program editor can create a program (as a file which is stored in some shared part of the file system) and the BBC BASIC interpreter can read and execute that file to run the program.
But Android doesn't have a conventional filing system; an app can create a file that it later reads back, but the file is not (straightforwardly) accessible by any other apps. So the normal IDE + interpreter approach doesn't work. (Strictly speaking limited means of communication between apps are provided, but you need to be able to program in Java to access them).
So I'm stuck. Being a 'dinosaur' who doesn't even own a smartphone doesn't help! Perhaps somebody with more experience of mobile OSes like Android or iOS can suggest how we might achieve a usable BBC BASIC app.
It's highly unlikely* that the BASIC you have linked to was programmed in SDL2, so whatever solutions it may have adopted are almost certainly available only to native Android applications (probably programmed in Java).
RFO BASIC is obviously an amazing product!!
Richard.
* Edit: Clearly it can't be, because it's about ¼ the size of BBC BASIC (using SDL2 results in a lot of bloat).
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