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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : A beginner (almost), woes aplenty
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plover Guru  Joined: 18/04/2013 Location: AustraliaPosts: 306 |
Quick post, my eyes not coping this late. My terminal has terrible status line colours for me. Now it looks dead easy to change this, example in the manual SET MMCOLOURS=0,7,6,4,2,0,5 So if position last, the 5 is set to 7, this should be white? Well I have tested in the windows terminal, global setting and I have set it in the MMBasic terminal and in the EDITOR? Nothing changes  The picture is worse than in real life, I can distinguish the purple colour.  |
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CaptainBoing Guru Joined: 07/09/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2170 |
... a bit late to this party... "The channel is left open till the program explicitly closes it. Perhaps that is something worthy of change." No. Really guys. Absolutely not. This is just getting the language to prop-up buggy coding. There has always been a "file already open error" in MS Basics (error 55, since god was a lad, well at least since GWBasic and in every version since - QB, VB, VBA, VBS) and other dialects. Just because Sinclair basic introduced bad practice (one of many) doesn't mean it should be copied. A "fix" like this could be quite destructive to code and lead to bug-hunting which is far more complex than why you didn't close the file before you tried to re-use a stream number. ZXBasic is hardly the gold standard! Implicit behaviour should be kept to a minimum otherwise the programmer loses control and ends up coding around it. |
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| plover Guru Joined: 18/04/2013 Location: AustraliaPosts: 306 |
Tonights little exercise continued with the trying to change the statusline colours in the DOS MMBasic terminal. > SYSTEM "SET MMCOLOURS=0,7,6,4,2,0,14" > I assume that means that statement is accepted, a change from syntax errors. The figure 14 to change status line to bright yellow. Nothing has happened. > system "set colours" Environment variable colours not defined Error: Command could not be run > I guess that is fair enough as listing the environment variables, do not show MMCOLURS been added (listing variables with SYSTEM "SET" ) |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4044 |
I think it would run the SET fine but in a sub-shell which then exits. So it would overall achieve nothing useful. John |
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| plover Guru Joined: 18/04/2013 Location: AustraliaPosts: 306 |
JohnS Thank you for posting, I did wonder about the possibility that another shell was opening and closing because I thought a noticed a flicker for perhaps quarter second as if the console gave a shiver. I am givin up for the time being on trying to change the status line colours when using the 'edit' mode. My last attempt was to follow the line This did not seem to have any effect until about an hour later a couple of times the konsole show yellow status line text and grey background. "How hard can it be?? well I am finding out  for me it is overwhelmingTo get away from those variables I decided to have a play with the character set and work the 'edit' window. Where the F2 and F4 to run and return to edit if an error shows up. That is really nice and simple. Also figured out the copy and paste using F5. I am attaching a little program that may or may not present two problems. The first one is the programs stops unexpected the second will change colouring of the 'edit' on my system, the syntax highlighting goes wrong, and decapitates the program. Best I stop playing for the night I will end up walking the ceiling upside down.  2018-07-28_232943_p9-char-set.zip  |
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| plover Guru Joined: 18/04/2013 Location: AustraliaPosts: 306 |
I just played around with my file from previous post, discovered that Print chr$(7) Must be a LF well it works like that and also squaks at me, reminding me of morse code. Does anybody know if there is a morse code generator of form, in the "fruitshed", when I have slept I will remember what the real name it is I am after. 2018-08-03_010152_p9-char-set-2.zip |
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| lizby Guru Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3379 |
chr$(7) is the Ascii BELL character--that's why it squawks at you. Per the manual, "PRINT" without ";" at the end sends carriage return / newline. PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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| Boppa Guru Joined: 08/11/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 814 |
https://www.asciitable.com/ for a full listing of ascii codes |
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| plover Guru Joined: 18/04/2013 Location: AustraliaPosts: 306 |
lizby I had an inkling that I was wrong with chr$(7) but since it seemed to give me the NL (New Line) I was looking for I ignored my sixth sense banging me on the head drawing my attention to the number should be over 10. Well I had to go and check a bit better and recognised chr$(13) which I have put through the test in the little file attached. Boppa The ASCII link came in handy for looking up the values below 33, I think I will make a copy and put in the directory that I work in with MMBasic for DOS. 2018-08-03_192758_p9-char-set-3.zip |
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NPHighview Senior Member  Joined: 02/09/2020 Location: United StatesPosts: 203 |
Earlier postings in this thread discuss setting environment variables. I'm seeing some weird behavior in mmBasic for DOS, and wonder if I'm alone. I've set up the external editor to use Notepad++ (just can't unlearn ctrl-c & ctrl-v - sorry!), and the file location to be on my SD card receptacle, E:. mmBasic is able to see files in that location (when I do a 'files' command within mmBasic) and load files from that location with no further qualification ('load "life.bas") System variables are set up to use double quote marks (for Notepad++, which is in the "...Program files..." subdirectory, requiring quotes, and for safety's sake, for my SD card:  However, when I do a 'System "set"' command inside mmBasic, this is what I get:  which is missing the right-hand quote. And when I quit Notepad++ after editing a Basic program, I get this: for MMDIR:  I've also tried putting double double quotes at the end of the string (""), and removing quotes from the string, and removing quotes but putting a backslash at the end of the string - all to no avail. Is this a bug or a feature? Thanks! - Steve Edited 2020-09-16 07:46 by NPHighview Live in the Future. It's Just Starting Now! |
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Geoffg Guru Joined: 06/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 3292 |
I don't know what is going on here but I do not think that it is a MMBasic issue (environment variables with quotes work for me). Geoff Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net |
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| NPHighview Senior Member Joined: 02/09/2020 Location: United StatesPosts: 203 |
Thanks, Geoff - I'll poke around and see if I can narrow the focus a bit more. I'm running mmBasic 5.05.03 on Windows 10 64-bit Pro, Bootcamp, on a MacBook, so there's plenty of opportunity for funny business. By the way, this whole ecosystem is marvelous. Thanks so much! Reminds me (very pleasantly) of programming on HP-9845 desktop computers in the late 1970's / early 1980's, but with the opportunity to talk one-on-one with the creator! - Steve Live in the Future. It's Just Starting Now! |
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| NPHighview Senior Member Joined: 02/09/2020 Location: United StatesPosts: 203 |
Geoff - I installed mmBasic for DOS on an entirely different computer (a Dell laptop running Windows 10, native), and instead of using the Settings to establish the environment variables, I wrote a small batch file to do so on the way in to mmBasic: SET MMDIR=E:\mmBasic\projects SET MMEDITOR="C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\Notepad++.exe" "C:\Program Files\mmBasic\mmBasic.exe" cls Note the lack of quote marks around MMDIR. mmBasic comes right up, and shows the contents of the subdirectory on the SD card in E: but when I load mc_pi.bas, shell out to the external editor, make a tiny change, save, and return, I still get this: > load "mc_pi.bas" > wedit Error : Expected a string > and the file listing in mmBasic doesn't show the change I had made. Just to be sure that the problem isn't with Notepad++, I changed the batch file to invoke Microsoft's Notepad: SET MMDIR=E:\mmBasic\projects SET MMEDITOR="Notepad.exe" "C:\Program Files\mmBasic\mmBasic.exe" cls mmBasic still shells out successfully to Notepad, has the program loaded, but when I save & exit, I get the same "Error : Expected a string" message, and the file in mmBasic's memory is unaltered. To be trebly sure, I downloaded & installed the Atom IDE, which is pretty huge. I saw the "Error : Expected a string" message come up in mmBasic as it was shelling out, not upon the return from the external editor. So, this has eliminated: * The host PC * The external editing environment * The setting of environment variables through "Settings" vs. command line What's still in common: * Windows 10 Pro 64-bit * mmBasic version 5.05.03 * The "Error : Expected a string" message, regardless of external editor Your thoughts? Live in the Future. It's Just Starting Now! |
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phil99 Guru Joined: 11/02/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2642 |
Early in this thread mention was made of using immediate mode and the problem of doing anything complicated. When trying program fragments layout what you want to do in Notepad, duplicate it then reduce the copy to one line with ":" at each line end. This can be up to 255 characters long (spaces included). Then copy and paste that line into MM Basic. If the line is a little over 255 replace every "PRINT" with "?" and remove as many spaces as possible. If it doesn't work first time you haven't wasted all your typing, just edit the notepad file and try again. |
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