Astro Solutions BrowserBasic Disk
22.7.2025
http://www.astrosolutions.de

BrowserBasic Disk is a version of BrowserBasic 2.05dp, which runs 
BASIC-sources from Disk. The file operations are done in the folder, 
where the BASIC-source is located. The new BASIC-instructions are 
shown with examples: 
OPEN "FILE.TXT" FOR OUTPUT AS#1
PRINT#1,"HALLO"

OPEN "FILE.TXT" FOR BINARY AS#1
A$="H"
PUT$ 1,A$

OPEN "FILE.TXT" FOR BINARY AS#1
LEN=LOF(1)

PAINT (X,Y),COL,OUTLINE

The opened files must be closed with CLOSE 1. Then the file is written 
on the disk or other programs can access the file. PRINT#1,"HALLO" 
is written without space between PRINT and #1. Otherwise the program 
doesn't run. After you have opened a file for binary access, you can 
read from it with GET$ 1,1,A$ or write to it with PUT$ 1,A$ but not 
both. The first parameter of PUT$ 1,A$ is the file number and the string 
should be written to the file. The first parameter of GET$ 1,1,A$ is 
the file number and A$ will be one byte long. LEN=LOF(1) gets the length 
of the file with the number 1 and stores the value in the variable LEN. 
PAINT (X,Y),COL,OUTLINE paints an area with the color COL 
(0-15, VGA-colors). PAINT finds all pixels in the area around (X,Y)
and sets them to COL, if they don't have the color OUTLINE. 
PAINT always checks and sets the neighbour-pixels upwards, downward, to 
the left and to the right. Only if the neighbour-pixel didn't have the 
color OUTLINE, its neighbours will be checked. 

You can find 33 BASIC-Games, which run with Astro Solutions BrowserBasic 
Disk, in the zip-archive of BrowserBasic2.05dp. The games for the 
application version are outside of jar-archives. 

BrowserBasic Disk is written in JAVA. There are two versions of it. 
The version BrowserBasic Diskdp runs with JAVA 1.1.8 and JAVA 1.8 and 
uses a deprecated JAVA API. It can also be run with the Linux Mint 9 
Live-DVD. It must be Linux Mint 9 and it must be the Live-DVD version. 
Perhaps you can find linuxmint-9-gnome-dvd-i386.iso somewhere on the 
internet. The other BrowserBasic Disk version is compatible to JAVA 1.8. 
It doesn't use a deprecated JAVA API. Both versions must be started 
with the command "java L3DCompilerAppl". The working directory must 
be the directory of the class files. Change to that working directory 
with a command-line-tool. 
If you want to process binary files with PUT$ and GET$, it is possible, 
that the JAVA VM uses another standard charset than expected. 
java -Dfile.encoding=ISO-8859-1 L3DCompilerAppl
starts with the standard charset ISO-8859-1. 
