9 Commits

Author	SHA1	Message	Date
Andrew Kesterson	fa5623b722	Say where the collision handler is armed, and what BYE's last two verbs do ... A reader building chapter 17 from the text alone had to infer that COLLISION 2, BRICKHIT belongs in the setup block rather than the frame loop, and met SCNCLR and QUIT for the first time in the assembly step. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01EwxGB6TdoVvZ11KQQME9cL	2026-08-02 13:20:34 -04:00
Andrew Kesterson	8da8d717c8	Teach chapter 17 the collision verbs its listing now uses ... The previous commit converted `examples/breakout/characters/breakout.bas` and left the chapter teaching three routines the listing no longer has. This closes that. Step 5 gains the `SOLID` registration beside the `BR#()` array, and says why there are two records of the same thing: one is the program's, one is the interpreter's, and the id is the array index plus one so neither has to be looked up from the other. It is also now the only place cells and pixels meet, which Step 2 used to promise about Step 10. Step 10 is rewritten. It was `HITTEST` -- fourteen lines dividing pixels by cell sizes to recover a grid index -- plus `XBRICK` and `YBRICK` testing the ball's leading edge, with a paragraph explaining that the cost of testing an edge rather than a box is missing a brick clipped at the corner by up to seven pixels. All of that is gone. What replaces it asks four questions: which rectangle, is it still there, which way out and how far, and which axis to reverse. Three things in it are worth the reader's attention and get it: `BUMP(2)` is a separate accumulator from `BUMP(1)` so the handler never sees the paddle; the guard against being told about an already-broken brick, because a handler runs a line or two after the overlap; and `SOLID BI# + 1` in `KILLBR`, without which the ball goes on bouncing off a brick that is no longer drawn. That last one is now a row in the rules table. The float note is kept and sharpened rather than dropped. `D%` must be a float because field 4 is one, and the products land in integer `BX#`/`BY#` -- which is safe here because a box against a box gives a normal that is exactly -1, 0 or 1, and would *not* be safe against a circle. Stated as a reason rather than left as something that happens to work. Step 9 loses its two brick calls and its `OX#`/`OY#` backup, with a sentence saying why there is nothing to restore to. Step 16's declaration block and name count follow, and the skeleton arms the handler. Every fenced example still runs; both suites green; the game runs clean. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01EwxGB6TdoVvZ11KQQME9cL	2026-08-02 11:21:32 -04:00
Andrew Kesterson	1fb808f480	Rewrite the two game tutorials as instructions rather than commentary ... Chapters 17 and 18 read as a code review of a finished listing: they explained why each decision had been made, walked through the project's own history, and led with what had once been broken. A reader who wanted to build the game got the reasoning and had to reconstruct the program. Both are now step-by-step. Each opens with a picture of the finished game and a bullet list of the steps, each bullet is a section, and each section states its goal, shows the code, and says how to check it. Chapter 17 is sixteen steps and Chapter 18 is thirteen, and the last of each is the assembly: the order of the file, the full declaration block, and the routines the earlier steps referred to. Project history is gone -- it belongs in Chapter 14 and in git -- and where a listing has to do something awkward, the tutorial shows how first and names the `TODO.md` item that will make it unnecessary second. **Three defects had no entry anywhere**, which the rewrite found by trying to state each rule as a rule. §6 item 35: `a - b + c` computes `a - (b + c)`, because `subtraction()` sits above `addition()` as its own precedence level and the inner loop eats the `+`. Item 36: only one unparenthesised `AND` or `OR` is matched, which is item 12's `if`-where-`while` on the one operator pair item 12 did not reach. Item 37: a `GOTO` out of a `FOR` or a `DO` leaks the loop's scope, so a main loop written that way stops on the thirty-second lost life -- which is why both games are built out of `LABEL` and `GOTO`, and it is a workaround rather than a preference. Chapter 3 gains the identifier rule the third trial ran into: there is no underscore in a name, and the error says `UNKNOWN TOKEN _`. **`tools/screenshot.c` learned to draw the text layer**, behind a new `text=1` fence attribute, because Chapter 17's game is characters in the grid and a figure without that layer is two sprites on black. It opens the bundled font at the size the standalone frontend uses, so a figure's cell size is the reader's cell size, and it uses the akgl sink alone rather than a tee so the program's output lands in the picture instead of on the stdout the caller reads to decide a figure failed. Both new figures -- `breakout-game.png` and `breakout-game-artwork.png` -- are generated from listings in the chapters like every other one. Verified by handing each chapter, alone, to an agent on a much smaller model and telling it to build the game from the tutorial text with the `examples/` tree off limits. The first pass scored 3.5 and 3 out of 10 and named what was missing: routines referred to but never shown, the third level layout, the sprite `DATA`, the font table, edits to earlier routines that were never marked as edits. Those are now in. The second pass built a 658-line Chapter 17 game that plays itself for ninety seconds with the score at 1890 and no error line, and the third built a 1053-line Chapter 18 game with 61 labels, no invented routines, no gaps found, and forty seconds clean. 9/10 and 8/10. One real bug in the new prose, caught in review: Chapter 18's `HITBAR` did not set the `HIT#` that `BALLPADDLE` reads to decide whether the paddle already caught the ball. Both suites green in both configurations, `docs_examples` and `docs_screenshots --check` pass. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01EwxGB6TdoVvZ11KQQME9cL	2026-08-02 08:08:23 -04:00
Andrew Kesterson	0679c3042b	Stop the listings and their chapters stating fixed defects as fact ... You were right that this was still everywhere. The two `.bas` files carried their workarounds as present-tense statements about the interpreter -- "a name first created inside a GOSUB costs a value slot that is never handed back", "writing PAST the terminator of a short row draws nothing at all", "SSHAPE and GSHAPE ignore the subscript on a string array", "a FOR inside a BEGIN block does not survive the RETURN" -- and every one of those is now false. A comment that lies is worse than no comment, and these were the first thing anybody opening the files would read. **The characters game takes the geometry fix.** `CW# = 16` becomes `CW# = RGR(3)`, and the grid comes from `RWINDOW`, so the game fits whatever window and font the host gives it. That was the one thing in the listing that would break on a different font, and `RGR(3)` and `RWINDOW` were added to the interpreter because of it -- leaving the constant in place while Chapter 17 teaches the function was the inconsistency worth closing. `RGR(1)` still comes first so a build with no graphics device refuses by naming the device that is missing. Everything else in both listings keeps its shape and says why. Declaring every name up front, guarding loops with `GOTO`, six scalars for six brick stamps: none is forced any more and none costs anything, so they stay, with the comments marking which rules stand and which are history. The sprites header's five traps are marked FIXED where they are fixed. The chapters follow: Chapter 17 Step 2 no longer says "the listing still has `CW# = 16`", and Chapter 18's trap section is "five things that did not do what they looked like" with the two that still stand named up front rather than left to be counted. Verified: Chapter 17 Step 2's block is once again verbatim from the listing, so every quoted fragment in both chapters matches its source with no exceptions; both games run 40 seconds on the SDL frontend with no error line; both suites green in both configurations; `docs_examples` and `docs_screenshots --check` pass. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>	2026-08-02 06:32:48 -04:00
Andrew Kesterson	91fadf032b	Bring the tutorials back in line with the fixed interpreter ... Eleven of the thirteen defects these two games found are fixed, and the chapters that taught around them said things that are no longer true. Chapter 17: the drawing verbs are no longer invisible, they are covered by a text layer that `WINDOW` can now shrink; the cell size is `RGR(3)` and the grid is `RWINDOW`, not a hand-measured constant; a character written past a short row's end lands. Chapter 18: traps 3 and 4 -- the skipped block that broke its caller's `RETURN`, and `SSHAPE` ignoring a subscript -- become history rather than warnings, and Step 3 no longer claims a sprite is the *only* way to put a picture up, only the one that costs nothing. **Neither `.bas` listing changes, and both READMEs now say why.** The character game still writes `CW# = 16` and the artwork game still keeps six brick stamps in six scalars. What those listings are worth is being what a program written against those constraints looks like, with comments explaining what each one was avoiding -- rewriting them to pretend the problems never existed would throw that away. So Chapter 17 Step 2 shows the `RGR(3)`/`RWINDOW` form and says plainly that the listing beside it does not use it. That is the one place in either chapter where a quoted fragment is not verbatim from the game. Also: the closing pointers now say which entries are struck and which stand, and the budgets table in Chapter 18 notes that several of those budgets were tighter when the game was written. TODO.md section 9 item 3 is updated rather than struck: the `WINDOW` half is fixed, the default text area owning the whole window is not, and whether that default is right is a question rather than a defect. Verified against the fixed interpreter: both games run 45 seconds on the SDL frontend with no error line and the score climbing; both suites are green in both configurations; `docs_examples` passes and `docs_screenshots --check` re-renders all thirteen figures byte-identically; coverage is 95.0% of lines against the 90 gate, with src/variable.c at 100%; and every other quoted fragment still appears verbatim in the listing it came from. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>	2026-08-02 00:31:06 -04:00
Andrew Kesterson	a1dcfcacf3	Land a character written past a short row's terminator ... A grid row is a NUL-terminated string, and `putchar_at()` wrote the character, advanced and terminated -- so `CHAR 1, 40, 1, "#"` on an otherwise empty row stored the `#` at column 40 with `text[1][0]` still `'\0'`, and the render loop, which stops at the terminator, drew nothing at all. The silent nothing is the trap. The write succeeded, the cursor moved, the stdout mirror showed the character, and only the window stayed blank -- so the program looked right everywhere except where it mattered. The documented truncation on the way *back* is fine and is unaffected. `putchar_at()` now fills the gap with spaces before storing. **Padded there rather than in `sink_moveto()`**, which TODO.md proposed: this way `moveto` stays read-only -- the objection that entry raised against its own suggestion -- and a row is only ever padded when a character actually arrives. The pad fills from the terminator rather than replacing it. The buffer is not cleared between rows, so replacing only the terminator would expose the tail of whatever longer row used to be there: writing "ABCDEFGHIJ", truncating it to "ABCX", then writing at column 7 must give "ABCX Z" and not "ABCX FGZ". tests/akgl_backends.c asserts all three cases, and the middle one keeps the truncation pinned. TODO.md section 6 item 32, struck. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>	2026-08-02 00:13:42 -04:00
Andrew Kesterson	694b446ce4	Let a program ask how big the text grid is ... `RGR(1)` and `RGR(2)` gave the window in pixels and nothing gave columns, rows or the cell size -- so anything placing a character *and* a sprite at the same spot had to hardcode a number measured by hand against whatever font the host loaded. The Breakout in examples/ does exactly that, `CW# = 16`, and it is the one thing in that listing that breaks on a different font or window. **`RWINDOW` is BASIC 7.0's own answer and had never been implemented here.** `RWINDOW(0)` is the current text window's rows and `RWINDOW(1)` its columns. `RWINDOW(2)` reports a C128's 40 or 80 column screen mode, and this interpreter has neither -- refused by name, because answering 0 would be a plausible lie, which is worse than a refusal that says why. The cell size in pixels is `RGR(3)` and `RGR(4)`, beside the surface's own dimensions rather than on `RWINDOW`. Two reasons: a cell size is a fact about the surface, and `RWINDOW` reports the *window*, so dividing `RGR(1)` by a column count stops being right the moment a program calls `WINDOW`. Both read a new optional `grid` entry point on `akbasic_TextSink` -- columns, rows, cell width, cell height -- implemented by the akgl sink and forwarded by the tee, in the shape `moveto` and `window` already had. NULL everywhere else, so both verbs refuse by name against a sink with no grid. `akbasic_sink_init_ stdio()` clears it for the same reason it now clears the other two. Measured on the standalone build: `RGR(3)` answers 16 and `RWINDOW` answers 50 columns by 37 rows -- the three numbers the Breakout listing had written out as constants -- and `RWINDOW` follows a `WINDOW` call while `RGR(3)` does not. tests/console_verbs.c drives the answers through a stand-in sink with a grid, since the harness sink is stdio and has none; tests/graphics_verbs.c covers the new `RGR` fields, their refusal, and the moved range bound. The `c excerpt=` block in docs/10-embedding.md moves with the header, which is `docs_examples` doing its job. TODO.md section 6 item 31's second half, struck. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>	2026-08-02 00:05:17 -04:00
Andrew Kesterson	05f241aca1	Stop a scalar created inside a scope costing value-pool slots ... A scalar now lives in the variable record (`akbasic_Variable::inlinevalue`) rather than drawing from the value pool, so a `GOSUB` local, a `FOR` counter and a `DEF` parameter cost nothing at all. The pool is a bump allocator with no free, and its comment justified that with "nothing in BASIC destroys a variable". Scope exit does: it marks the variable slot unused, `new_variable()` memsets the slot it hands back -- clearing `values` -- and `variable_init()` therefore took *fresh* slots for a variable whose old ones were still counted. Every scope that created a local leaked, with no diagnostic until the pool ran dry on whichever line happened to be unlucky. Six thousand `GOSUB`s creating one local used to die on the 4091st at `LOC# = 1` with "Array of 1 elements does not fit in the 0 remaining value slots". They now run. A `DEF` called eight thousand times used to die between the four and five thousandth -- the leaking slot was the call scope's parameter, which is a scalar -- and both forms now run. A game creating one name per tick was dead in half a minute; the Breakout in examples/ was, after twenty-five seconds. **A `@` name is the one exclusion, and it is the whole of it.** A structure or a pointer to one keeps pool storage, because a pointer into a record outlives the scope that DIMmed it -- docs/16-structures.md says nothing is reclaimed and `prev_environment()` relies on it. The name suffix is the right test rather than `structtype`, which the DIM path sets *after* calling `variable_init()`. A local array therefore still leaks, deliberately, and is now the narrow rule the tutorial teaches. `SWAP` needed the other half: it copies whole variable records, so the `values` pointer that came over named the other variable's inline slot -- which by then held this variable's own old value -- and SWAP silently did nothing. Caught by tests/language/housekeeping/verbs.bas, which is the golden corpus earning its keep. tests/value_pool.c is the new coverage. It asserts the mechanism as well as the consequence: a later change that moved arrays inline too would pass every behavioural case and quietly break the pointer guarantee. The sharpest case takes the pool's whole 4096 slots in four arrays after two hundred scope entries, so one leaked slot has nowhere to go. Chapter 17 Step 3 taught "declare every name at the top" and no longer needs to. It now teaches what is still true -- a name first seen inside a subroutine dies at RETURN, so a routine cannot answer its caller through one -- and its demonstration is the array case, which still fails. TODO.md section 6 item 30 and section 9 item 1, both struck. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>	2026-08-01 23:47:49 -04:00
Andrew Kesterson	cb0e2d0800	Add two Breakout examples and the tutorials that build them ... Two complete games in `examples/breakout/`, both 100% BASIC: `characters/` draws its wall in the text grid with two `DATA` sprites for the ball and paddle, and `sprites/` loads CC0 artwork and captures its whole screen with `SSHAPE`/`SPRSAV`. They take opposite shapes for reasons that are entirely this interpreter's, which is what the chapters are for. `docs/17-tutorial-breakout.md` and `docs/18-tutorial-breakout-artwork.md` build each one a step at a time, and end in a checklist of the rules a real program runs into: create every name before the loop starts, write a text row whole, loop with `GOTO` rather than `DO`, put the float on the left. Every trap is a runnable block with its own output rather than a claim -- the value pool dying at four thousand names, the skipped `BEGIN` block that breaks its caller's `RETURN`, `SSHAPE` ignoring a subscript, `READ`'s single cursor. Five figures, generated from the listings beside them by `docs_screenshots`, and a `breakout_art` setup so the ones that load artwork load the example's own. The character game's wall cannot be photographed -- the screenshot host omits the text layer on purpose -- so it is shown as compared output instead. `docs/07-sound.md` never said `SOUND`'s frequency is a SID register value rather than hertz, which both games depend on. It says so now, with the conversion from `src/audio_tables.c:84`. `TODO.md` gains the thirteen defects the two games turned up -- §6 items 30 to 33 and all of §9 -- each with a reduction that fits on a screen, the file and line of the cause, and what a fix would touch. Verified: `docs_examples` passes in both build configurations, `docs_screenshots --check` re-renders all thirteen figures and byte-compares them, the full 109-test suite passes in both builds, every quoted fragment was checked to appear verbatim in the listing it came from, and every relative link and anchor resolves. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>	2026-08-01 22:54:42 -04:00