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Post by Carl Gundel on Dec 15, 2018 15:07:10 GMT -5
I am working to start posting alpha releases for LB5 by the end of this month.
Just to give an update on where things stand, Liberty BASIC 5 has had many internal builds this year. A lot of work has gone into porting it forward to a new major revision of the development tools and libraries. This is important because until now there has been no way to support the Raspberry Pi platform, and I see that as a major opportunity. Recently I have been working to finish up the graphics and sprite support.
Liberty BASIC 5 will include new features such as:
- Support for Windows and new OSes: MacOS, x86 Linux and the Raspberry Pi
- Database functionality such as ODBC and SQLite (possibly also Postgres and MySQL)
- New function name style syntax for programming widgets and graphics i.e. #draw color(255, 0, 0)
- More widgets including a grid/table
- Easy and clean object model added for more modular programming
- The ability to pass #handle based things (widgets etc.) as parameters into subs and functions
- Improved performance
- Tabbed code editor
- More than one sprite surface per running program
- and more
These things are already in the codebase. Some will not work completely in the upcoming alpha releases, but we will get there.
Looking forward to pushing this stuff out there and seeing what you all do with it.
-Carl
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Post by alincon on Dec 15, 2018 16:32:46 GMT -5
I think all of us are looking forward to seeing what we can do with it!
r.m.
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Post by tsh73 on Dec 16, 2018 15:24:41 GMT -5
There is an old advertising (2003) that went right into Russian proverbs I can't find it translated so I'll retell it for you. www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOOJX7aHkH4Dialogue goes as is: Girl: More Father: But it's third one. You'll blow off! Girl: Just fill the glass and step away. So, about " seeing what you all do with it." Just fill the glass...
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Post by Carl Gundel on Dec 16, 2018 15:44:49 GMT -5
There is an old advertising (2003) that went right into Russian proverbs I can't find it translated so I'll retell it for you. www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOOJX7aHkH4Dialogue goes as is: Girl: More Father: But it's third one. You'll blow off! Girl: Just fill the glass and step away. So, about " seeing what you all do with it." Just fill the glass... The glass is filling...
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Post by metro on Dec 17, 2018 19:30:07 GMT -5
Great news Carl, does "x86 Linux" imply that it will only run on 32bit systems
or have you had a chance to test on x86-64.
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Post by Carl Gundel on Dec 17, 2018 20:03:17 GMT -5
Great news Carl, does "x86 Linux" imply that it will only run on 32bit systems
or have you had a chance to test on x86-64.
Both. ;-)
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Post by metro on Dec 17, 2018 22:32:43 GMT -5
even better news,
thanks Carl
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Post by Carl Gundel on Dec 17, 2018 23:48:39 GMT -5
even better news,
thanks Carl
There will be 32-bit version, and a 64-bit version, and for Windows also, and MacOS unless nobody wants a 32-bit Mac version. We will see. The 32-bit versions will be slightly smaller, but maybe that doesn't really matter anymore. A few years back we had a group chat where we agreed that LB5 should produce applications no larger than 5MB. I will still try for that, but seriously 5MB is not large at all by today's standards. I know we have people who shake their fists and shame Liberty BASIC because it doesn't make 100K executables.
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Post by meerkat on Dec 18, 2018 11:39:02 GMT -5
I know it's too early to know for sure, but I understand Fuschia will run Windows. So I guess Fuschia can be added. This should let us make phone apps. Not sure how it will would interface?? But it could be very interesting!!! Dan
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Post by Chris Iverson on Dec 18, 2018 15:10:52 GMT -5
"Fuschia will run Windows"? Are you referring to Google's Fuchsia OS project? Because that's as far from Windows as Linux is. Fuchsia is a completely separate, custom-made OS being developed by Google, and speculation is that the aim of it is to replace Android as their mobile platform, due to ongoing compatibility issues with the Linux kernel, and disputes with the Linux devs.
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Post by meerkat on Dec 18, 2018 16:08:18 GMT -5
"Fuschia will run Windows"? Are you referring to Google's Fuchsia OS project? Because that's as far from Windows as Linux is. Fuchsia is a completely separate, custom-made OS being developed by Google, and speculation is that the aim of it is to replace Android as their mobile platform, due to ongoing compatibility issues with the Linux kernel, and disputes with the Linux devs. I may have been mistaken. I thought Liberty Basic 5 had it's roots from Run Basic. Besides windows, Run Basic also runs on Linux. Fuchsia is posed to run Android and Linux apps. So my bad for thinking that it would run on Fuchsia. I did try some RFO Basic on Fuchsia without much luck. They expected Fuchsia to come out in a few years, but some devices are using it already as their OS. We will see what happens??
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Post by Chris Iverson on Dec 18, 2018 18:08:49 GMT -5
Sorry, that's just me being pedantic.
Fuchsia will eventually run Android apps, I believe, but that would be because they would re-implement the Android API stack and Runtime under Fuchsia, similar to how WINE lets you run Windows apps on Linux, and WSL lets you run Linux apps on Windows. It will not run Linux apps, as it is not a Linux/UNIX system. (It will probably eventually support a Linux-like or UNIX-like userland, just for ease of use and available tooling, but it won't be able to run Linux apps directly. Anything running directly on Fuchsia will have to be recompiled.)
For LB to run on Fuchsia, there would need to either be a compatibility layer like WINE or WSL in place to let a different platform's LB run on Fuchsia, or Visual Smalltalk(I believe that's what Carl's using now) would have to be ported to Android or Fuchsia directly.
Common speculation is that the reason for the change is to let them update the system and still retain compatibility with drivers developed for older versions, which kernel-level Linux is famously hostile to. It's why it can be so difficult to get newer Android releases on some older phones; the chipset maker only releases binary blobs, not kernel source code, which aren't compatible with newer kernel versions.
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Post by Carl Gundel on Dec 18, 2018 21:54:52 GMT -5
Sorry, that's just me being pedantic. Fuchsia will eventually run Android apps, I believe, but that would be because they would re-implement the Android API stack and Runtime under Fuchsia, similar to how WINE lets you run Windows apps on Linux, and WSL lets you run Linux apps on Windows. It will not run Linux apps, as it is not a Linux/UNIX system. (It will probably eventually support a Linux-like or UNIX-like userland, just for ease of use and available tooling, but it won't be able to run Linux apps directly. Anything running directly on Fuchsia will have to be recompiled.) For LB to run on Fuchsia, there would need to either be a compatibility layer like WINE or WSL in place to let a different platform's LB run on Fuchsia, or Visual Smalltalk(I believe that's what Carl's using now) would have to be ported to Android or Fuchsia directly. Common speculation is that the reason for the change is to let them update the system and still retain compatibility with drivers developed for older versions, which kernel-level Linux is famously hostile to. It's why it can be so difficult to get newer Android releases on some older phones; the chipset maker only releases binary blobs, not kernel source code, which aren't compatible with newer kernel versions. Liberty BASIC up to v4.5.1 has been implemented in VisualSmalltalk. Liberty BASIC 5 is implemented in VisualWorks Smalltalk. This is a completely different platform. However if Fuchsia were to implement Wine or similar, theoretically you could run the old or the new LB on it.
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Post by timfung5 on Dec 19, 2018 19:31:43 GMT -5
Hello...
Please make version 5 an user-friendly language for game making.
Liberty BASIC is a language which is very easy to learn and use, which has a simple structure as BASIC language, but allows users to create programs with the same features of the most advanced programming languages. If it is a language that also allows the creation of ordinary modern games with great graphics performance, which is a very big incentive for programmers, especially students and young children. Then Liberty BASIC's customer base will grow significantly. I hope that this new version 5 will cover this gap in the area of programming for beginners, and also be a language that allows the creation of professional application softwares in every way. Thank you very much.
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Post by Carl Gundel on Dec 19, 2018 21:51:15 GMT -5
Hello... Please make version 5 an user-friendly language for game making. Liberty BASIC is a language which is very easy to learn and use, which has a simple structure as BASIC language, but allows users to create programs with the same features of the most advanced programming languages. If it is a language that also allows the creation of ordinary modern games with great graphics performance, which is a very big incentive for programmers, especially students and young children. Then Liberty BASIC's customer base will grow significantly. I hope that this new version 5 will cover this gap in the area of programming for beginners, and also be a language that allows the creation of professional application softwares in every way. Thank you very much. I can't really promise more than an evolutionary upgrade to LB5 in terms of a game engine. More powerful sprite handling is about all I can do for now. Please reply with any specific ideas you would like to see implemented.
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