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... actually (standard,ANSII) C is a more limited than most BASIC dialects. This even holds to Pascal dialects, I think.

I mean, that (standard, ANSII) C is also a more limited than most of the Pascal dialects!

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Because they're all procedural languages - one big happy familiy. Even the most popular OO languages of today - C++, C#, Java - are still procedural.

If they aren't procedural anymore, are they still the respective language? That's what I meant with false labelling!

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Quote: Lack of recursion, e.g.! Maybe available in modern BASICS, but then, they aren't basic -- and probably BASIC -- anymore. You're really persistant in NOT mentioning the means to create a mass-chaos regarding structure and reusability eh

You're a little cryptic! Did you ask me to mention the means to create a mass-chaos regarding to sturcture and reusability? In what language?

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I won't even remotely *think* about progamming Polka in MSX-Basic even if I have a 1ghz MSX with the fastest videochip at my disposal !

The Polka dance? Or is there a language called Polka?

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Ofcourse I speak for myself, but I doubt someone is happy with the old unstructured MSX-Basic when he tries to make bigger apps.

I also doubt that! The size of application is naturally limited by the size of the MSX memory. Today, this amount of memory is considered very small, especially if you don't use a memory mapper. In order to do so, you must know how to use it. Of course, you can make a bigger application using LOAD insturction to reload the next part of the application, but this is tedious and needs extra time to reload. So you can go on being caught by the system's limitations when doing bigger programs or you can recognize that there's a limit in program size beyond which it doesn't make sense coding in BASIC or even on MSX!

Polka: http://www.msx.org/Polka-1.2.newspost2484.html

Made in a modern Basic ..., about 3000 lines ... no way I'm going to do that in MSX-Basic on a 1Ghz MSX, with 1Gb RAM for Basic, with a speedy videochip.

(1) It's not about the memory in MSX-Basic, it's about MSX-Basic being stone-age and unsuitable for big apps with serious reusability.. period.
(2) hence: MSX-Basic should evolve to a full procedural language in order to keep ppl programming big stuff in it, without them fleeing away to Pascal or C, which they might not want in the first place anyway!
(3) A new MSX-Basic should be a compiled Basic
(4) and yes ... so it may be not a 'real' basic as in: "stone-age"... who cares?

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Yes, in C you always can do such things. But this source must be preprocessed before compiled, if it would be given to the compiler without preprocessing, the compiler would complain. So it's not really C! The preprocessor is, as for as I know, an important but no integral part of C.

You didn't notice the "", did you?

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For C, they wanted to have as few keywords as possible,

Yup

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even if it forces the programmer to think in an unusual way.

Hm, I don't think it's unusual. It's different from Pascal, that's true. But to me, a construction like "DO something WHILE condition" is just as usual/readable/logical as "DO something UNTIL another_condition" (In ML, in the end it's the difference between JP Z and JP NZ).

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A language should't force the programmer to think in an unusual way

Any programming language forces the programmer to think in a certain way. And if that way is different from the way the programmer is used to think, you could call that "unusual". But that's a problem of the programmer, not of the language

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Quote: Because they're all procedural languages - one big happy familiy. Even the most popular OO languages of today - C++, C#, Java - are still procedural. If they aren't procedural anymore, are they still the respective language? That's what I meant with false labelling!

Eh? You've lost me. Which languages are you refering to with "they"?

I only confirmed that all languages mentioned so far (up until my original remark) resemble each other a lot because they are all procedural languages: All part of the same family. And that even 'modern' OO languages are still members of that same family and thus have the same control structures.

I've said nothing about language naming, labeling or whatever...

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Quote: even if it forces the programmer to think in an unusual way. Hm, I don't think it's unusual. It's different from Pascal, that's true. But to me, a construction like "DO something WHILE condition" is just as usual/readable/logical as "DO something UNTIL another_condition" (In ML, in the end it's the difference between JP Z and JP NZ).

What's considered 'unusual' depends on the programmer and his/hers mother tounge and the programming languages he/she is used to.

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Quote: A language should't force the programmer to think in an unusual way Any programming language forces the programmer to think in a certain way. And if that way is different from the way the programmer is used to think, you could call that "unusual".

Yes!

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But that's a problem of the programmer, not of the language

Yes, its a problem of the programmer and his linguistical background, both, in natural and in programming languages. Seems to me that REPEAT something UNTIL expression is more likely in English or German.

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Quote: Quote: Even the most popular OO languages of today - C++, C#, Java - are still procedural. If they aren't procedural anymore, are they still the respective language? That's what I meant with false labelling! Eh? You've lost me. Which languages are you refering to with "they"?

I refered exactly to the languages you mentioned.

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I only confirmed that all languages mentioned so far (up until my original remark) resemble each other a lot because they are all procedural languages: All part of the same family. And that even 'modern' OO languages are still members of that same family and thus have the same control structures.

It seemed to me that you talked about the developement of these languages, that they were procedural in the past and maybe could get something different in the future. (As we talked about developing BASIC, so it gets a block IF or real functions or longer variable names. -- This is not the same as becoming object orientated, I know!) Real languages can change to another type of language in language typology, e.g. English, which was very inflectional in former times and has almost totally lost that today and hence is now considered of isolating type.

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I've said nothing about language naming, labeling or whatever...

False labelling is a juristical term I got form www.leo.org for german ''Etikettenschwindel''. The german term points it out clear: ''Schwindel'' is fake, hype, and this is done with the labels of a product. Unfortunately, this isn't conveyed in the english juristical term. It means, that you want to cheet someone by giving a product a false name. If there's salt in the box, you aren't allowed to sell it labeled suggar! If there's a BASIC with only say 10% of the features you expect by the name BASIC, to my mind, it's false labelling. You better should call it however you like, but not BASIC, because it isn't real BASIC anymore. It would be like if you would sell sugger with only 10% suggar in the box, but 90% salt!

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..and there we go again, Basic seems to be NOT allowed to expand *ever* ... hence one should jump over to Pascal or C.. Yes, let's keep Basic old and stupid then ... :S

BASIC is allowed to expand, develop, evolve, of course, but one should still be able to recognize the language as BASIC! And the new BASIC should be still backwards compatible, i.e. it should be possible to compile or run old programms on the new BASIC without to many modifications. The BASICs must be still ''mutually intelligible'' to a sufficient high degree. If not, I would consider them as two different languages!

..the developers/users from darkBASIC, blitzBASIC, visualBASIC etc. don't have issues with that however ..

ps. does this look blashphemious to you? Is it all that bad?

Graphics 640,480,16      ; screen 7 orso.. with '16'bit color

For t=0 To 4
	Read a$
	Text 0,t*16,a$     ; preset(0,t*16):print#1,a$
Next

Flip      ; double-buffering system, this command swaps active/shadow, so now we see the result of the printing..

WaitKey()      ; a$=input$(1)
End

Data "Basic","will","always","be","Basic"

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BASIC is allowed to expand, develop, evolve, of course, but one should still be able to recognize the language as BASIC!

ah! but then again, 'what' is BASIC? Is the definition defined somewhere? Many modern-BASIC users will argue they feel comfortable because it's all BASIC!

ps. don't answer "Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code", I'm not referring to that ^_^

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And the new BASIC should be still backwards compatible, i.e. it should be possible to compile or run old programms on the new BASIC without to many modifications.

If we're programming in some editor:

Choose compiler in some menu:

[ ] classic
[x] new

Then you can run old stuff, program oldskool-style, but also choose to work with a new style..

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(1) It's not about the memory in MSX-Basic, it's about MSX-Basic being stone-age and unsuitable for big apps with serious reusability.. period.

Yes, MSX-BASIC is not suitable for big applications and not suitable for system programming. For me, big applications -- concerning MSX-BASIC -- is more than 16 KB program and data or so. On the VZ200, I had a 16KB memory extension. What do you consider a big application?

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(2) hence: MSX-Basic should evolve to a full procedural language in order to keep ppl programming big stuff in it, without them fleeing away to Pascal or C, which they might not want in the first place anyway!

MSX-BASIC is a fully procedural language! The term ''procedural'' refers to the type of language, it doesn't mean that there must be procedures and functions like in Pascal. Yes, it is the free choice of the people to keep on coding in BASIC. But if that version of BASIC used only contains say 10% of the classical BASIC syntax and semantics, than, to my mind, it is ''Etikettenschwindel''.
They make themselves believe that they use BASIC, but is more something different. So better to invent a new name for that and saying that it is based on BASIC.

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(3) A new MSX-Basic should be a compiled Basic

Maybe! If we want to stay compatible in the MSX system tree, every MSX system upgrade must contain the classical MSX-BASIC. This doesn't exclude other sophisticated BASIC versions also being available in the system ROMs or on cartridges or whatever storage medium is used then.

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(4) and yes ... so it may be not a 'real' basic as in: "stone-age"... who cares?

Seems to me that you're the only one here speaking insultingly about the original BASIC!

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..the developers/users from darkBASIC, blitzBASIC, visualBASIC etc. don't have issues with that however .. ps. does this look blashphemious to you? Is it all that bad?

Why should it look blasphemious to me? Why should it be all that bad?

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Graphics 640,480,16 ; screen 7 orso.. with '16'bit color For t=0 To 4 Read a$ Text 0,t*16,a$ ; preset(0,t*16):print#1,a$ Next Flip ; double-buffering system, this command swaps active/shadow, so now we see the result of the printing.. WaitKey() ; a$=input$(1) End Data "Basic","will","always","be","Basic"

I would write it that way, without source text infected with TABs:

Graphics 640,480,16 ; screen 7 orso.. with '16'bit color

For t=0 To 13
  Read a$
  Text 0,t*16,a$
Next

Flip ; double-buffering, command swaps active/shadow, so now we see the result of the printing ...

WaitKey()
End

Data "Basic","will","always","be","Basic",","
Data "but","maybe","BASIC","is","a","different","language","!"

I would omit the ; a$=input$(1) - comment, 'cause it's not necessary anymore. The name of the WaitKey-function already says all. The comment only would be a confusing reminder on that what once was real BASIC style. As you said:

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..the developers/users from darkBASIC, blitzBASIC, visualBASIC etc. don't have issues with that however ..

If I got you right ...