sbasicg (SDL)

Live mode

Live mode uses a secondary output window to display the results of your program whenever you press save.

To enter live mode, press the F8 key from the file editor. Note the keystroke help window documents the F8 key along with other supported functions.

Press F8

Start making changes to your program, then press Ctrl + s to save your changes to the file. The program output will appear in the secondary window. The secondary window will run the program to completion. It then waits until the file has changed before restarting the program. Note if you press save while your program is waiting for user input, then changes will not yet appear.

Press Save

Debugging

sbasicg supports a limited form of interactive debugging. You can set a break-point by pressing Ctrl + t over the intended program line. This also allows you to use the Ctrl + g keystroke to navigate between markers.

Set marker

Press the F5 key to start the debugging session. This will cause a secondary output window to appear.

Start debugging

You can now press F6 to step through program lines, or F7 to continue. The program will either then run to completion or stop when encountering a marker line. A dump of variables and the current stack position appear in the right hand pane. Note this can become very messy with large programs limiting its usefulness. The alternative is to use the LOGPRINT command. This outputs to the DebugView app in Windows or to the bash console in Linux.

Step through code

How to use better looking fonts in the Windows version

Envy font

Download http://download.damieng.com/fonts/original/EnvyCodeR-PR7.zip
Unzip and copy “Envy Code R.ttf” and “Envy Code R Bold.ttf” into the same folder as sbasicg.exe.

Adobe Source Code Pro

Download https://www.1001fonts.com/download/source-code-pro.zip
Unzip and copy SourceCodePro-Regular.ttf and SourceCodePro-Bold.ttf into the same folder as sbasicg.exe.

Note: if all of the above are present, the envy font takes precedence.

You need to restart SmallBASIC for the new font to be displayed.

How to use better looking fonts in the Linux version

Download the Envy or Source Code Pro fonts as per above instructions
Copy the .ttf files to ~/.fonts.
Invoke the following command:

$ sudo fc-cache -fv

You can select then select one if the following using the -f command line argument:

"Envy Code R"
"Source Code Pro"
"Ubuntu Mono"
"DejaVu Sans Mono"
"FreeMono"
"Liberation Mono"
"Courier New"

For example:

sbasicg -f "Courier new"
sbasicg --font="Liberation Mono"

Keyboard shortcuts

[Ctrl] + [c] Break running program
[Ctrl] + [m] Show menu
[Ctrl] + [backspace] Back to launcher
[Ctrl] + [pageup] Page up scrolled display
[Ctrl] + [pagedown] Page down scrolled display
[Ctrl] + [up-arrow] Line up scrolled display
[Ctrl] + [down-arrow] Line down scrolled display
[Ctrl] + [p] Screen dump

How to help design a better looking editor color theme

There are a number of color themes available in the text editor. You can switch between themes by pressing ALT+t while editing a file. When SmallBASIC starts, the last theme is read from the settings.txt file (under %APPDATA%/SmallBASIC in windows and ~/.config/SmallBASIC in linux) and when it exits the current settings are written back to the file.

The steps below should give just enough functionality to help design a better looking theme. Sorry, it’s a bit of a convoluted process.

Start SmallBASIC, then click to edit a .bas file, then press ALT+t four times. You are now looking at the modifiable theme.
Exit SmallBASIC (Alt+f4).
Copy settings.txt into a separate file (say settings.new), then open settings.new in a programming editor in linux: $ cd ~/.config/SmallBASIC $ cp settings.txt settings.new
Repeat: Make any changes to the hex values (see below) in settings.new, copy settings.new to settings.txt, and then restart SmallBASIC to inspect the changes. in linux: $ cp settings.new settings.txt && sbasicg -e foo.bas
Once you have something looking fantastic, email me your settings and I’ll include them in the next release.

— settings.txt — 529,173,640,480,100,0,1,0 c8cedb,a7aebc,484f5f,a7aebc,a7aebc,00bb00,2e3436,888a85,000000,4d483b,000000,2b313a,0083f8,ff9d00,31ccac,c679dd,0083f8 …

Offsets for the above color hex values

0 - color
1 - selection_color
2 - number_color
3 - number_selection_color
4 - cursor_color
5 - syntax_comments
6 - background
7 - selection_background
8 - number_selection_background
9 - cursor_background
10 - match_background
11 - row_cursor
12 - syntax_text
13 - syntax_command
14 - syntax_statement
15 - syntax_digit
16 - row_marker