BERKELEY LOGO 4.01, AMIGA RELEASE 01, 25 JUNE 1997 This distribution is supposed to contain: LOGO -- the executable program logolib -- a drawer full of standard Logo commands that should always be present; many Logo programs count on having them available helpfiles -- a drawer full of files needed by Logo's internal help system user_manual.text -- the user reference to Logo operation GPL.text -- the GNU Public License document source.lha -- archived C sources (I used SAS/C.) csls -- a drawer full of example programs from the Computer Science Logo Style books by Brian Harvey NOTE: These examples are from the first edition, not the current second edition. I have not tested most of them with this Logo. examples -- a drawer with a few minor example programs I put together ucb_logo.readme -- short description of the archive, as for AmiNet amiga_notes.text -- this file, information about the current Amiga release = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = QUICK START System requirements: 68020 or higher processor, some form of FPU, and OS 3.0 or better. If you have a C compiler, you may compile for other processors or non-FPU systems, but OS 3.0 is going to be required from here on out. To get started quickly with Berkeley Amiga Logo: double-click the LOGO icon. The most important commands you need to know are "am.prefs" to set your screen mode, and "bye" to exit the program. Have fun! ABOUT THIS RELEASE This is the second Amiga release of Berkeley Logo. The orginal version in portable C code was created by by Brian Harvey , author of the classic book series, "Computer Science Logo Style". The code was ported to the Amiga by Andy Philpotts (he's working with BeOS nowadays) and further overhauled by Tony Belding . The previous release to AmiNet went off rather half-cocked. Some of the bugs included were quite amazing, such as an inability to print floating point numbers! Nobody ever bothered to report the bugs to me, of course. I expect most folks downloaded the program, saw how dreadful it was, and deleted it without a second thought. This time Logo is working better, but I still consider it BETA software. That means I want and need your feedback. Email me, please! Bang on the program! WHAT'S IT GOOD FOR? I'm glad you asked. This current release attempts the highest compatibility with standard Berkeley Logo. It should prove a good vehicle for exploring the Logo language, computer science and artificial intelligence concpets, and geometry concepts with turtle graphics. It's also a proven educational tool for teaching programming, problem solving, and geometry concepts to young people. It is NOT currently suited for heavy use as a general-purpose Amiga programming language. It lacks the primitives needed to access the Amiga system in a flexible way. However, this may change. My current plans are to expand the language with primitives making it more widely useful. These should include commands to load images, perform raster graphics, display graphical text, play sound samples, present simple requesters and read mouse events, and so forth. Some of my future plans include: * improved docs and tutorial * more and better example programs * multi-media extensions * support for P-OS and RISC processors * web page devoted to Logo support Used to be, computers came with easy programming languages like BASIC. Now most people have come to think programming is like rocket science or brain surgery. And that's not far from the truth when it comes to C or C++ or Java. I want Berkeley Amiga Logo to become a language that beginners and casual programmers can use to create simple but useful programs, and without all the hassle of "serious" languages like C. I am open to suggestions for the best ways to improve it toward that goal. WHAT ABOUT POWERLOGO? Previously I worked some on Gary Teachout's PowerLOGO language for Amiga. It was a more powerful, flexible, and elegant language. However, it was also more non-standard and less friendly. It suffered from some bugs and needed a lot of updating and work to make it do what I wanted. Gary seemed to lack enthusiasm for the project. Furthermore, the sources of Berkeley Logo are free under the GNU license. Therefore, I have put all PowerLOGO work on indefinite hold and will be working with Berkeley Logo from here on. WHAT ABOUT REBOL? As some of you may know, Carl Sassenrath has been working on a new programming language called "Rebol". Mr. Sassenrath is a star of the Amiga world, as he created much of Amiga OS and also created Commodore Amiga Logo. His new language, Rebol, shows some Logo influences. Rebol is intended to be portable, multi-media oriented, and useful for distributed processing as an alternative to the likes of Javascript. You can check it out at . WHAT ABOUT AREXX? Believe it or not, REXX was originally designed to be a easy language! ARexx on Amiga has suffered from a poor environment, poor documentation, lack of support libraries, and all-around neglect. When looking for an easy language to work with, I considered creating an ARexx editor and libaries instead of using Logo. Porting Berkeley Logo and working with it was simply less work for me, and I've always had a soft spot for Logo. Maybe some other enterprising person will tackle the job of overhauling ARexx. (That's a hint to you guys at Amiga International and Gateway 2000, by the way!) With the right support, ARexx could become for the Amiga what MS Visual BASIC is for Windows systems. WHAT ABOUT CANDO? I consider CanDo the king of easy programming environments. Unfortunately, the company (Inovatronics) went out of business, and everyone associated with CanDo vanished. Lately I've heard a rumor that a company in Germany called AB Union has picked it up. I found their web pages, but they were all in German, and there were only hardware products mentioned, not CanDo. I emailed them, but haven't got any reply yet, so I don't know if they are for real or not. If anyone finds out, let me know! COMPUTER SCIENCE LOGO STYLE After many years, there is finally a new edition of Computer Science Logo Style, which is practically the bible of Logo programmers. Not aimed at children or raw beginners (though beginners could use it), CSLS is a course in programming and computer science for students, hobbyists, and people who just plain enjoy programming. I recommend it most highly. You can get individual books or the whole set from Amazon at . LOGO MAILING LIST If you have email, you can send "subscribe logo-l" to majordomo@gsn.org and get on the Logo mailing list. It's for all kinds of Logo, not just Berkeley Logo. Tony Belding http://hamilton.htcomp.net/tbelding/