Andrew Kesterson
cdaefcc941
Organised the way the C128 Programmer's Reference Guide is: the language first, then each hardware area, then the reference sections. One markdown file per chapter. The verb and function references are generated from the interpreter's own dispatch table, with an assertion that every row is described, so they cannot drift out of step with what the program accepts. 98 verbs and 30 functions. Every example was run before it was written down, which caught three claims that were wrong: a whole FOR loop on one line prints nothing rather than looping once, MID and INSTR count from zero where a C128 counts from one, and a multi-line DEF returns a value the caller has to assign away. Chapter 13 is the list a BASIC 7.0 programmer needs -- roughly sixty documented differences, including the two known FOR defects and the fact that drawing does not survive a frame. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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6. Graphics
Everything in this chapter needs the SDL build and a graphics device. Without one each verb refuses by name:
? 10 : RUNTIME ERROR DRAW needs a graphics device and this runtime has none
The coordinate space
Drawing coordinates are 320 by 200, with (0, 0) at the top left — BASIC 7.0's
hi-res screen. That is true whatever size the host's window is; stretching to fit is
the host's business, not the program's. SCALE maps a different range onto the same
screen.
Colour
COLOR binds a source to a palette index, and the drawing verbs name the source
rather than the colour:
10 COLOR 1, 3
20 DRAW 1, 10, 20
Sources are numbered 0 to 6; palette indices are 1 to 16, as on a C128. That indirection is BASIC 7.0's, and it is why every drawing verb's first argument is a small number that is not a colour.
The verbs
GRAPHIC
GRAPHIC mode chooses a screen mode; GRAPHIC CLR clears it. Mode 0 is text and
refuses to draw.
DRAW
10 DRAW 1, 10, 20
20 DRAW 1, 0, 0 TO 100, 100 TO 200, 0
One coordinate pair plots a point. Two or more, separated by TO, draw a polyline. A
bare DRAW 1 plots wherever LOCATE left the pixel cursor.
BOX
10 BOX 1, 10, 10, 40, 40
Corners, and an optional rotation angle. An unrotated BOX outlines rather than fills.
CIRCLE
10 CIRCLE 1, 160, 100, 50, 30
Source, centre, then the two radii — so it draws ellipses. Further arguments give a start angle, an end angle, a rotation and the degree increment, which is what makes it an arc or a polygon.
PAINT
10 PAINT 1, 160, 100
Flood-fills the region containing a point. If the region is too large for the fill's own working space it stops and reports rather than leaving a half-painted screen with no explanation.
LOCATE
Moves the pixel cursor, which is where a bare DRAW plots and where a BOX with two
coordinates finishes.
SCALE
10 SCALE 1, 1023, 1023
Turns on user coordinates and gives their maxima. With it on, your coordinates are
mapped onto the 320 by 200 screen. SCALE 0 turns it off.
WIDTH
WIDTH 1 or WIDTH 2 sets how thick a drawn line is. A thick line is drawn as
parallel passes; see Chapter 13.
Saving and stamping regions
SSHAPE copies a rectangle off the screen and GSHAPE stamps it back:
10 BOX 1, 0, 0, 20, 20
20 SSHAPE A$, 0, 0, 20, 20
30 GSHAPE A$, 100, 100
A$ holds a handle, not the pixels. On a C128 the string holds the bitmap, so a
program could save it to disk or take its LEN. Here a string is a fixed 255 bytes and
the region is a device surface, so what goes in the string is a reference to it —
SHAPE:0. You can pass it to GSHAPE and to SPRSAV, which is everything BASIC ever
does with one, but you cannot store it or measure it.
What is not here
FILTER parses and then refuses: there is no filter stage to configure. See Chapter 7.
The graphics verbs draw straight to the renderer rather than into a display list, so anything drawn is overwritten by the text layer on the next frame. A program that wants its drawing to persist has to redraw it. This is recorded as a defect rather than a design; see Chapter 13.