Liberty Basic 5

[RNBW]

I notice that Carl Gundel is developing Liberty Basic 5. Is there any interest from Richard in making LBB compatible?

[guest]

I notice that Carl Gundel is developing Liberty Basic 5. Is there any interest from Richard in making LBB compatible?

It's not possible, not least because LB5 is cross-platform and LBB is Windows-only. Anyway, why would I want to: most of the shortcomings in LB 4 that LBB was written to overcome have already been fixed or improved upon in LB5. Also, since LB5 runs faster than BBC BASIC an emulation couldn't offer a speed benefit, like LBB often can over LB4.

[RNBW]

I thought that was the case, but I've been brought up to ask the stupid question.

LB5 looks as if it has promise, but it has still some way to go and the GUI output is still very basic.

[guest]

LB5 looks as if it has promise, but it has still some way to go and the GUI output is still very basic.

LB5 sets itself a tough challenge: to support cross-platform GUI features that have a high degree of compatibility with the Windows native GUI controls used by LB4 (and LBB). It may be instructive to compare it with BBC BASIC for SDL 2.0, in which I currently support a (very) limited number of GUI elements such as pushbuttons, static controls, single-line text boxes, listboxes and comboboxes. They don't come close to the graphical quality or functionality of the Windows equivalents, and there are important controls currently missing, such as a texteditor and menus.

Of course one big difference is that LB5's GUI is (presumably) written in SmallTalk and therefore it is entirely Carl's baby. BBCSDL's GUI features are themselves written in BBC BASIC, so they are amenable to being improved upon and added to by any competent BASIC programmer. That's not to say that anybody has attempted to do that, as far as I know they haven't (apart from Svein Svensson's excellent Tree View control), but they could.