37 replies to this topic

[hloberg]

Been wanting to play around with BASIC XE on my emulator but can't find a manual to it in English. The only manual I have found is in Italian. I have started translating the manual to English but before I get too far (it's a slow tedious process) I want to be sure there ISN'T already an OSS BASIC XE manual out there somewhere in English.
Does anyone know of an OSS BASIC XE manual posted somewhere in English?
thanks, HLO

[flashjazzcat]

Seconded - been looking for this for the OSS documentation archive I'm supposed to be putting online.

[hloberg]

flashjazzcat, on Tue Nov 29, 2011 5:37 AM, said:

Seconded - been looking for this for the OSS documentation archive I'm supposed to be putting online.

Well, since I have had no post to the contrary I am going to assume that there is NOT an English version of the book around.
I don't know a lot of Italian (Spanish more) so i'm using Google translate which makes a context translation instead of a word for word translation. Does a really good job but it is a translation from another language so some of it doesn't make sense. I'm having to go in and re-type and test the parts that don't make sense. very slow going.
Therefore, my booklet will not be exactly the English version of the book but my interpretation of the translation from Italian.
What would help is if someone out there has a copy of the English XE manual so they could do some editing.
I'm not holding my hopes though of that happening. BASIC XE wasn't a very big seller. No where near the success of BASIC XL.
I'll post bits of it as I progress.
HLO

[Stephen]

hloberg, on Tue Nov 29, 2011 9:30 AM, said:

flashjazzcat, on Tue Nov 29, 2011 5:37 AM, said:

Seconded - been looking for this for the OSS documentation archive I'm supposed to be putting online.

Well, since I have had no post to the contrary I am going to assume that there is NOT an English version of the book around.
I don't know a lot of Italian (Spanish more) so i'm using Google translate which makes a context translation instead of a word for word translation. Does a really good job but it is a translation from another language so some of it doesn't make sense. I'm having to go in and re-type and test the parts that don't make sense. very slow going.
Therefore, my booklet will not be exactly the English version of the book but my interpretation of the translation from Italian.
What would help is if someone out there has a copy of the English XE manual so they could do some editing.
I'm not holding my hopes though of that happening. BASIC XE wasn't a very big seller. No where near the success of BASIC XL.
I'll post bits of it as I progress.
HLO

I will check my collection when I get home this evening. I know I don't have a printed copy, but maybe I picked up an electronic copy sometime over the past few decades.

[hloberg]

Actually I have been saying Italian. It's actually Polish, a language I know even less about.
Anyway, here is the first of it. I plan to do about a command per day. that's all the time I have.
should take two or three months.

Attached Files

•  BASICXE polish to english.pdf   158.1K   48 downloads

[Stephen]

Stephen, on Tue Nov 29, 2011 11:16 AM, said:

I will check my collection when I get home this evening.  I know I don't have a printed copy, but maybe I picked up an electronic copy sometime over the past few decades.

Well, I have nothing (Basic XL PDF, but that won't help).

[hloberg]

Stephen, on Tue Nov 29, 2011 4:16 PM, said:

Stephen, on Tue Nov 29, 2011 11:16 AM, said:

I will check my collection when I get home this evening.  I know I don't have a printed copy, but maybe I picked up an electronic copy sometime over the past few decades.

Well, I have nothing (Basic XL PDF, but that won't help).

Your a genius! I forgot that 80-90% of BASIC XE is the same as BASIC XL. Even the manuals are the same.
(I remember that when a friend of mine upgraded from BASIC XL to XE many years ago.)
I can just cut and paste most of the XL manual to the XE manual!
Just made this project a whole lot faster.

[Rybags]

Why not just divide the book into parts and get someone working on each one.

I just had a look - I've got a .DOC version of the Polish manual - is the PDF version text copy/paste able, or is it only a scan?

[hloberg]

Rybags, on Tue Nov 29, 2011 7:02 PM, said:

Why not just divide the book into parts and get someone working on each one.

I just had a look - I've got a .DOC version of the Polish manual - is the PDF version text copy/paste able, or is it only a scan?

thanks for the offer but now that I remembered that the two manuals are so close (They more than likely used the XL manual to create the XE manual) I'm zipping through at warp speed. Only parts that need translating now are to new commands.
What I will need is for people to check it for accuracy when I'm done.
Looking for commands I may have mis-interrupted or forgot the differences between the XL and XE.

[Stephen]

Glad I could help - I did not know they were mostly similar, as I have only ever used Turbo BASIC XL.

[flashjazzcat]

Great work!

[hloberg]

Stephen, on Tue Nov 29, 2011 9:36 PM, said:

Glad I could help - I did not know they were mostly similar, as I have only ever used Turbo BASIC XL.

Way back a friend of mine had a copy of BASIC XL and when BASIC XE came out he bought it and gave me the XL (wish I still had it). I remember us comparing the books and commenting how similar they were. There is only a few commands that are actually added to BASIC XE, the biggest being EXTEND.
Side note: translating this stuff has convinced me of just how silly the concept of a universal translator (a.k.a. Star Trek) really is. Even though Google Translate does a great job of context translation the very way a Polish person speaks v. an American speaks make some of the translations down right confusing.

[hloberg]

flashjazzcat, on Wed Nov 30, 2011 7:00 AM, said:

Great work!

thanks. I'm almost 1/4 done. During the holidays it's real slow in my real estate business so I got a lot of time of my hands.

[JAC!]

Quote

BASIC XE is approximately two to six times faster than the standard Atari BASIC and more than twice as fast as BASIC on the Commodore 64 or IBM PC Junior.

Priceless :-)

[hloberg]

about 1/3 done.
If you download it and find anything wrong, please let me know.
Also, check out the EXTEND command. it gives a full 64k of programming space to a 130XE!

Attached Files

•  PROJECT - BASICXE 12-1-11.pdf   226.18K   41 downloads

Edited by hloberg, Thu Dec 1, 2011 5:45 PM.

[UNIXcoffee928]

A while back, I did a preliminary machine translation. I left the Polish in, and followed each text block with the English-ish translation. You can find it here. I had intended to work on it more, but never got around to it. Maybe it will save you a few keystrokes.

[flashjazzcat]

The Polish is easier to follow.

[UNIXcoffee928]

flashjazzcat, on Wed Dec 7, 2011 6:14 AM, said:

The Polish is easier to follow.

Ha, yeah, I had addressed that, here.

ERROR 138, LOL.

[hloberg]

Got it, thanks.
A nice thing about Google translate (which I am using) is that it does a context translation and makes a lot more since than a word for word translation.
Anyway, I'm finding 95% of the book is the same as BASIC XL so I'm mostly doing a cut-n-paste from that book (which is in English).
about 1/2 done now.
One interesting thing about the Polish version; they are a lot more descriptive of each command than the English version. I guess OSS assumed the Polish were less accustom to programming than Americans.

[flashjazzcat]

Perhaps this is why the Polish are now such accomplished coders.

Google translate has visibly improved over the past year or two alone. The only places it tends to fall down (understandably) is when it attempts to translate keywords or proprietary jargon. It also hates the leading periods of compiler directives (it usually attaches them to the end of the preceding word).

Incredibly capable, though, on the whole.

Edited by flashjazzcat, Fri Dec 9, 2011 5:33 AM.

[hloberg]

flashjazzcat, on Fri Dec 9, 2011 5:33 AM, said:

Perhaps this is why the Polish are now such accomplished coders.

LOL! that's probably true.

[hloberg]

Only the appendix is left to finish.
Check out the new commands sortup/ssortdown and procedure/call/exit. those I had to use both google translate and bing translate. very tough and I'm still not satisfied that they make real good sense.
comments are welcome.

Attached Files

•  PROJECT - BASICXE.pdf   534.1K   34 downloads

[hloberg]

flashjazzcat, on Fri Dec 9, 2011 5:33 AM, said:

Google translate has visibly improved over the past year or two alone. The only places it tends to fall down (understandably) is when it attempts to translate keywords or proprietary jargon. It also hates the leading periods of compiler directives (it usually attaches them to the end of the preceding word).

I found that Bing translate is a little more forgiving of programming jargon and line numbers than google translate. Makes since, Bing is Microsoft.

[flashjazzcat]

hloberg, on Sat Dec 10, 2011 8:37 PM, said:

Only the appendix is left to finish.
Check out the new commands sortup/ssortdown and procedure/call/exit. those I had to use both google translate and bing translate. very tough and I'm still not satisfied that they make real good sense.
comments are welcome.

Great - gonna check this out. Would you have any objection to this being hosted at atari8.co.uk with all the other OSS manuals when it's done?

Quote

I found that Bing translate is a little more forgiving of programming jargon and line numbers than google translate. Makes since, Bing is Microsoft.

Hmmm... I might run the MADS manual through Bing's translator then and see how it comes out.

[hloberg]

No problem. go ahead and post it. should be completely done in about a week.