Talk:List of BASIC dialects by platform

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[edit] Big changes

Okay, I just finished some major clean-up and re-work of this article. I created some new groupings. I created/modified higher level groupings of "Platform", "Category", "Multiple platforms", and "Other, and grouped the groups in those. I see this page as better thought of as "BASIC dialects in useful groups" rather then strictly by platform. I sorted the groups within the larger groups. I did some random cleanup. However, I'm still not happy with this.

Remaining problems:

  • Manual sync required with List of BASIC dialects
  • It is a giant unwieldy messy ugly pile of links and random info
  • Many dialects do not fit neatly into any category, or fit into multiple categories
  • The multi-platform list will tend to grow without bound

The first one is the big one. It's already out of sync and is only going to get worse. Information duplication is bad, bad, *BAD* when it comes to things like this. I'm also concerned about the mess aspect. Simple list pages are one thing (they are basically like a table of contents), but this has random info scattered through-out. That makes the sync problem worse, and also means what should be a simple list is now a useful reference page as well. The other two are minor in comparison, but still annoying.

I'm thinking we would be a lot better off creating subcategories of the "BASIC dialects" category for major platforms, categories, etc., and filing everything into those categories. That way, the MediaWiki category system will manage it all for us. Turn both list articles into redirects to the top-level category page and be done with it.

The one drawback I see to using categories that there are a lot of minor dialects without their own articles. Those not good stub canidates, since they are unlikely to have significant information contributed any time soon. Perhaps we could create a "List of minor BASIC dialects" or some-such thing to hold all of those?

Comments, suggestions, concerns?

--DragonHawk 03:31, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

"List of minor BASIC dialects" seems a bit subjective. Perhaps splitting the list into "List of current BASIC dialects" and "List of historical BASIC dialects"? Using the more objective definition something like "a historical BASIC dialect is one that that only runs on machines that are no longer commercially available (or an emulation of those machines)". --68.0.120.35 15:02, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] merge

I agree with DragonHawk that it is too easy for the 2 articles to get out of sync. I think it would be *slightly* better to append the current "List of BASIC dialects by platform" article to the end of the current "List of BASIC dialects" article, and make "List of BASIC dialects by platform" into a redirect.

Even thought it's exactly the same amount of data (the alphabetical list, and the platform-categorized list), I think it's easier to keep 1 article in sync with itself rather than keep 2 articles in sync with each other.

I'm going to slap the "merge" tags on the articles now, in preparation for this slight improvement. Perhaps this is one of the Wikipedia articles that will be greatly improved, but only one slight improvement at a time. --68.0.120.35 15:02, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] AMOS BASIC, STOS BASIC ancestry

The article previously called both AMOS BASIC and STOS BASIC ancestors of each other. Obviously this isn't true. It's STOS that came first and AMOS that came after that. — JIP | Talk 15:55, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You're right. It must have crept in when I translated from the German version of this page. I actually used to use STOS BASIC myself so should have spotted it. I've removed the HTML comment next to the AMOS BASIC entry.

[edit] Combined multi-platform and specific platform dialect listing

I wonder whether we should repeat multi-platform dialects under each affected platform, so that people looking for a specific platform's available dialects won't be forced to look up those in the multi-platform listing after first having checked the platform in question. Suggested format for the repeated entries: "<dialect> (multi-platform; also <additional plf> [ , additional plf ] )". Any comments? --Wernher 02:09, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

We could do * ''<dialect>: See: 'List of BASIC dialects for multiple platforms''' (this is similar to the way alternative names are handled in List of BASIC dialects). Listing the additional platforms in the entry does not have much point if they are already listed in the entry under List of BASIC dialects for multiple platforms, and if a new platform is added, it would mean having to find all the references and update them too. However, adding there references could quickly clutter up some of the single-platform lists - especially the ones for Windows and Linux. Ae-a 02:30, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

One thing that might help is limiting the multi-platform category to dialects explictly designed to be multiplatform (and not those that just happen to have a couple of ports). We can look for other categories. For example, the DEC BASIC stuff runs on a number of platforms, but they're all fundamentally *DEC BASIC*. Likewise, Rocky Mountain BASIC has been implemented by multiple companies on multiple platforms, but it's all basically the same HP derivied BASIC. As far as people looking for a particular platform, they should be able to text-search for the platform name and find it, no? --DragonHawk 03:38, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] DLA BASIC

dla basic -- The only stuff about "dla basic" I'm able to find by googling is some Polish web pages listing the phrase in e.g. VIC-20 & C64 specifications of ROM allocation; after checking with a Polish-English dictionary, I found that "dla" means "for", indicating that the phrase just means "for basic"... So please give some docs to prove "dla basic" existence. It is also mentioned on the resume at http://www.inspiredidea.com/home/resume/

The above was stuck into an HTML comment block in the text, unsigned. --DragonHawk 02:16, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Recommend a freeware Basic?

[edit] GNU/Fre/Open Source BASICs

Thanks for all hard work done on this article. But could there be a list of freeware basics, plus, say, a table of what the various can do, what their features are?

I for example am looking for a freeware Basic that could interrogate online databases using GET and POST. The only language I am comfortable with is GW BASIC so it has to be simple if possible. Any suggestions please?

? ? ? ?

Are there GNU BASIC compilers which directly compile to machine language?

I found the following (using Google):
-- Paul Ebermann 01:19 Sep 10, 2002 (UTC)

This is exactly the sort of question that this article should give a quick answer. How could we improve the article to make it easier for readers with this question to find FreeBASIC and other open-source BASIC dialects? --68.0.120.35 15:43, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

An excellent question! Either by creating a new section with a small list (uh oh!) of BASIC dialects available online, or by adding some to the References section. --Edwin Herdman 12:17, 4 May 2007 (UTC)