This text has been added to Parallax’s “More information” page for “BASIC Stamp Windows Editor version 2.0 Beta 1”:
The Beta 2 release of the BASIC Stamp Editor v2.0 will be at the beginning of June. Beta 2 will include adjustments to the PBASIC 2.5 tokenizer as well as Syntax Highlighting and other features. The accompanying documentation is projected to be available in PDF form on our web site at the end of June or early July. The non-beta complete BASIC Stamp Editor v2.0 will be released shortly thereafter.
I’m looking forward to it. How 'bout y’all?
But I am a little curious about the statement “Beta 2 will include adjustments to the PBASIC 2.5 tokenizer…”. I’m guessing there must have been problems with the tokenizing. (Or maybe they are just making it more efficient?) Personally, I never encountered any problems, so I’m adding a poll to this thread.
Did any of the rest of you see problem with the tokenizing? (By that I mean that some perfiectly valid code either would not compile or did not execute correctly.) If you encountered a problem, did you report it to Parallax? If you reported a problem, what kind of response did you receive from Parallax? (Goya, you mentioned a possible problem with DO…WHILE…LOOP. Do you still think it is a bug? Did you report it? Did Parallax say anything?)
Our hacks were all our own - as best as I could tell
We used the editor on a combination of old and new desktops and notebooks from an couple of old P-200’s to new P4’s and Celeron’s The code execution all seemed consistent.
*Originally posted by yangotang *
**It’s just a shame that it will never happen.
My view on the new tokenizer is that it’ll only make tokenizing more efficient. **
i honestly don’t see why it can’t be changed to something better.
yeah, we’d have to learn a new language, but anything is better than PBASIC. i don’t see why we can’t have the option to use the Java chip, or some sort of C/C++ chip. if there was a way to swap out “modules” or switch a jumper to use a different chip, it’d make so much more sense, while allowing us to slowly move away from PBASIC, which, well, has shown this year, and is bound to show even more next year, how underpowered it is for true autonomous applications.
*Originally posted by Ian W. * yeah, we’d have to learn a new language, but anything is better than PBASIC. i don’t see why we can’t have the option to use the Java chip, or some sort of C/C++ chip. if there was a way to swap out “modules” or switch a jumper to use a different chip, it’d make so much more sense, while allowing us to slowly move away from PBASIC, which, well, has shown this year, and is bound to show even more next year, how underpowered it is for true autonomous applications.
I agree. And like I said, this will never happen because FIRST has decided it won’t change for a while.
The Beta 2 release is out there on the Parallax site. The ReadMe lists some very attractive features:
Fixed bug in on-line help routines that prevented the help from appearing after the first time it was accessed.
Modified tokenizer to support enhanced GET/PUT (just like enhanced READ/WRITE) plus ELSEIF and fixed a few bugs.
Replaced old edit controls with new edit controls (integrated explorer, syntax highlighting, etc).
Added enhanced Find/Replace features.
Added automatic file backup feature. Saves backup of file upon save.
Added Favorites.
Added routines to allow Module Directories and Favorites to be re-arrangeable.
Added Show Overwrite Caret to preferences.
Fixed download routine to bring an existing Debug Terminal to the front if a program was just donwloaded on that COM port and it contained a DEBUG or DEBUGIN command.
Added routines to check of other instances of editor (to allow for single instance only).
Added Syntax Highlighting Scheme options in preferences.
Fixed bug in StampLoader/GenerateObjectFile that prevented it from working in v2.0 Beta 1.
A couple of these things I think I will really appreciate:
We can now PUT and GET words to/from scratchpad RAM.
ELSEIF! No more messy nested IF/THEN/ELSEs
And last, but certainly not least: Syntax highlighting! Yay!
i’m happy with this new version, but it’s still the hardware which limits us. until we can do simple math, out to at least two or three decimal places, it makes some things so much more complicated.
for instance, this year, to try and make the drills spin the same speed (since they go faster forwards), we had to come up with some formula. we had me, dan, a computer scientist, and a girl who’s really good at math. in the end, we had a formula, but it was constantly off by about 20 units. solution? i added a constant. we tried to find out why we needed the constant, but we couldn’t figure out how it fit in. we just accepted it, and moved on, cause we had no time to spare.
if we’re going to have more and more autonomous segments, we’re going to need much more control, much more speed, and much more memory space (ok, the scratchpad is good, but it can get very confusing if you use it a lot). there are plenty of solutions out there (everything from a Javalin chip to embedded linux), i just wish we had some way to make use of them in FIRST.
Yeah, Assembly might not be as good, but at least it actually has a use in the real world, whereas PBASIC, I’ve never heard mentioned by professionals. So at least with Assembly, you’d be learning something you might need to learn later on anyways.