Balancing compatibility with innovation .. ZXPand(+)

[PokeMon]

It is possible to use POWER Basic from Mathias Swatosch which allows to do IN/OUT Instructions from BASIC and I think he is working on some new features. Just rumours heard somewhere.

[sirmorris]

I wouldn't possibly know anything about that

[sirmorris]

What about the DELETE command. It's always felt a little odd, arbitrary.

If there was an alternative way of performing this function does the panel think that the DELETE command could be replaced with a more useful function? Sort-of like CONFIG but for higher level interactions with Zxpand...

ZXPP "OPEN MIDI"
ZXPP "PUT -C3+C5"

ZXPP "OPEN SERIAL,19200"
ZXPP "PUT HELLO WORLD EXCLAMATION MARK"
ZXPP "GET 16444"

ZXPP "DELETE FILE.P"

ZXPP "OPEN MOUSE"
ZXPP "GET 32768"

ZXPP "OPEN FILE,DATA.DAT"
ZXPP "GET 16514,123"
ZXPP "SEEK 1337"

That kind of thing?

Don't hang around with opinions - it's getting late

[siggi]

I think, an additional file-handle would be needed (each for an open channel) to allow more channels be open simultaneously (eg. read from file and write data to serial port or vice versa)

[sirmorris]

Yes, that makes sense. So the 'handles' to each of the streams could be open simultaneously should the underlying transport not conflict, E.G. serial, midi.

You might read from serial and write to file or vice versa.

[nollkolltroll]

Your examples are great sirmorris, though a bit higher up in the stack than my experiments. Please do continue with this.

My own wish would be to have a hi-speed streaming support that is as transparent as possible to the zeddy. The way I now have to first get the zxp to read a block of bytes, then switch the block to transfer buffer and read them is a bit too implementation specific. Streaming could be as simple as open file, then read any number of bytes until satisfied. Whatever waiting has to be done should be handled by zxp. Same with loading of the next sector, just hide it behind the zxp, possibly even pre-load it in the background.
The other way is to have direct access to 512-byte sectors.

Feels like I ramble on, I really would like you in a room with a whiteboard to discuss

[sirmorris]

There is a lower level 'api' aimed at streaming. Read only, memory based. I've converted your AY player over to it - I'll share details later. You may need to remind me ... things are hotting up right now


But yes, a whiteboard session would be good!

[Andy Rea]

sequencial reading and writing would be good, speed of operation not a concern, don't even need no <seek>....

regards Andy

[sirmorris]

I'm not sure what you mean Andy - having 2 files open and reading from one file and writing into the other, or just having the ability to put chunks of data to or get from an open file without having to load the whole into memory?

The former might be hard because of PIC restrictions, the latter will almost certainly be a feature.

[Andy Rea]

The latter... the former would require 2 cassette decks a la commodore style...

My need is to load a file into memory in its entirety, that file can then close. Open a new file for writing, Do some work with the memory contentn and write the result on the fly to a new file.

Regards andy