!Pr1
Blankenship's Basic........................Bob Sander-Cederlof

John Blankenship has put together an Applesoft enhancement package, at a mouth-watering price.  (See his ad elsewhere in this issue for his $20 introductory offer.)   He sent me a review copy, so I tried it out.

BBASIC is a large chunk of machine language code that sits between HIMEM and the DOS file buffers.  It also sits between you and Applesoft, hiding itself behind a facade of new editing and listing features.  BBASIC takes control even in direct mode, giving you an EDIT command, structured listings, and the ability to skip out of long catalogs.

In pure BBASIC, line numbers are used only as line numbers, not as destinations for GOTOs or GOSUBs.  A built-in RENUM command soon convinces you to live this way and like it.  In place of line-number branches, you use alphabetic "names" for subroutines, and WHEN-ELSE-ENDWHEN for logic flow.  John has also added WHILE-ENDWHILE, REPEAT-UNTIL, CASE, and other structured looping and branching words.

During execution, a special COMPILE verb creates a table of "names" used in your program.  This speeds up execution.

Hires Text generation is built-in, along with some extensions to the hires graphics.  Musical tone generation with control over pitch, duration, and timbre is also included.  You also get SORT, SEARCH, and PRINT USING.

I am just scratching the surface.  I didn't like every feature, but there is plenty left over.  Worth a lot more than $20.

By the way, if John's name sounds familiar, it may be because he is the author of "The Apple House", a book on controlling your home published by Prentice-Hall.  John also is a Professor at DeVry Institute.
