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bwBASIC Notice #002      6 January 1993
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NOTE: Bywater BASIC is a "freeware" BASIC interpreter, not a commercial
product.  This is posted as a service to the alt.lang.basic newsgroup.
I note this because when I posted the release notice for an earlier
version, some took it as a commercial annoucement.

If you would like to receive notices about Bywater BASIC (bwBASIC),
please send an email message to me (tcamp@acpub.duke.edu).  

Release of Version 1.11:
-----------------------

Version 1.11 of Bywater BASIC was released for the public on Wednesday
6 January 1993.  It is available for anonymous ftp download from
site duke.cs.duke.edu in subdirectory /pub/bywater; relevant files
are bwb111.zip (lines delimited by CR-LF) and bwb111.tar.Z (lines
delimited by LF only).  

Version 1.11 marks only a slight revision from 1.10; no significant
features have been added; the changes are almost entirely suggestions
from users that will enable wider compatibility. This is consistent with
my intention for version 1, namely, to offer a minimal BASIC interpreter
that would strive for utter compatibility.

Do continue to report compatibility problems.  I hope there aren't
any serious ones that I've overlooked in this release--I received about
150k of suggestions from users, and I am very grateful for these.

Can You Produce a Patch for v1.10->v1.11?
-----------------------------------------

I am really unfamiliar with the patch process; if anyone is able to 
ftp the v1.11 sources and produce a patch that will upgrade v1.10
to v1.11, I'd be very appreciative and I shall post it to 
comp.sources.misc.  

Version 2.xx is Underway:
------------------------

I am working on a new version of bwBASIC that will offer some significant
advances.  These will include: (a) all i/o located in a single file so
that i/o to various systems such as GUIs can be developed, (b) a redesign
of the interpreter so that it can be executed under a non-preemptive
scheduler (such as Microsoft Windows), and hopefully (c) the use of
CALL-SUB and multiline FUNCTION definitions consistent with the more
robust ANSI BASIC specification.  The first two are in place, the third
is next big item on the list. Some smaller-scale additions: execution
of a profile.bas upon startup; an EDIT function that simply calls
a user-defined editor (defined in variable EDITOR$) to edit the
program in memory.

You may note the direction that this is taking:  I'm hoping to implement
bwBASIC under a wider range of environments.  The TTY-style version
will remain in place, but I'm hoping to have versions for X/Motif (possibly
X/Open Windows), Microsoft Windows, etc. Under GUIs, error messages
would be handled by the GUI error handler, PRINT output would be
directed to a GUI window, but program execution itself will carry
on in the background.

I would note, however, that I do not see bwBASIC taking the place of products
like Visual BASIC, which seems designed to develop full-scale applications
for its GUI environment.  I see bwBASIC as a low-level script language
that will eventually serve as a basis for a kind of "software tools"
approach that will work (unlike current software tools) under various
GUI environments as well as TTY.  So I am not going to write editors,
data display programs, data extraction programs, data formatting
programs, etc., but I will hope to provide a very flexible, widely
compatible, low-level programming environment that will allow users
to link various small software tools together.

I'd also appreciate your comments on this design and development strategy.

Communications:
--------------

Ted A. Campbell
Bywater Software
P. O. Box 4023
Duke Station
Durham, NC  27706
USA
email: tcamp@acpub.duke.edu