Microreview for June 1999 Micropendium by Charles Good THE COMPLETE GPL PACKAGE compiled by Rich Gilbertson Rich Gilbertson is definately the best GPL programmer left in the TI community. His enhanced extended basic known as RXB pushes the technological limit of what can be done with the 99/4A. It is programmed in GPL which is probably the most efficient programming language there is for our computer. A GPL program usually uses less memory than the same program written in either extended basic or in assembly. In a December 1992 Micropendium article Rich compares 12 short programs written in the three languages. In each case the GPL version uses less memory. Programs written in GPL can be converted to ea5 format so that can be run without the need for any version of extended basic. Rich has put together a package of information and software for those who want to try their hand at this uniquely 99/4(a) programming language. This information is all available archived on 3 DSSD disks. There is also a supplemental hard copy of the above mentioned Micropendium article and other interesting material. Here is what you get on the disks. TI Graphics Programming Language Users Guide, a 1979 TI document. This is designed to aid those programming TI command modules. It is quite comprehensive and even includes chapters on style. You are told how to make good looking screens, what good user interactive prompts should look like, and what colors go together. Special instructions are included for the creation of multilingual command modules. You also get the following official TI documents, all dated 1980 and all except the speech document updated in March 1983: “Functional Specifications for the 99/4 disk peripheral”, “GPL Interface Specifications for the 99/4 Disk Peripheral”, Software Specifications for the 99/4 Disk Peripheral”, and “Speech Synthesizer Principle of Operation”. The speech document is particularly interesting because TI produced very little documentation about its speech synthesizer. GPL assembler and linker. This is one of several GPL assemblers that have been made available over the years. It takes GPL source code as created with a text editor such as the Funnelweb editor. You use the TI GPL User Guide as well as the on disk documentation that comes with this assembler to create the source code. Following easy directions you use the assembler to assemble the code and then you use the linker to link this assembled code so that it can be run from an assembly loader. That’s right, you can run your assembled GPL program as an EA5 program. Among the most interesting parts of this GPL package are the two assembler/linker demos. Using two different demo source codes provided you just follow the step by step instructions you are taken through the complete process needed to create demo programs that can be run as ea5. When you run these assembled and linked ea5 GPL programs you are taken back to the “Press 1 for TI Basic” screen, which displays additional menu items for your GPL programs. One of the demos shows how to take several different GPL programs and display them simultaneously as separate menu items following “Press 1 for TI Basic”. For free I can email you the three DSSD disks in PC99 format and the supplemental hard copy as a Microsoft Word v6 file. If you want me to mail real TI disks and the hard copy handout please send me $3 to cover my xerox media and postage expenses. ........................... ACCESS Rich Gilbertson (master GPL programmer and the compiler of the complete GPL package) 1901 H Street Vancouver, WA 98663-3352 Phone: 1-360-737-7963 Charles Good (source of the GPL package by email or regular mail) P.O. Box 647 Venedocia OH 45894 Phone 419-667-3131 Email good.6@osu.edu