Not being a whiz kid programmer, I toiled slowly through reading material on
SpeedoGdos and Gdos, trying to load a gdos font and print it on the screen.

Being part of the Hisoft Basic Gemvdi library, I did not find the Hisoft manual
example very helpful, particularly in the case of v_gtext where the
manual specified the following:

v_gtext(xcoordinate,ycoordinate,textstring)
I tried many times to compile this, each time with an error, before
I finally figured out that you are not supposed to enclose the parameters in
brackets, contrary to the manual.

Thus, the statement

v_gtext 100,100,"Yabadabadoo"

will write the text string whereas

v_gtext(100,100,"Yabadabadoo") as the manual says, will only generate a compiler
error.

You do not need to open a virtual workstation. I suppose Hisoft Basic does this
for you, although the manual lists the call to open the workstation, mentioning
you need the manual for other library calls.

I am trying to learn Hisoft Basic 2.10 and find there is little source code out
there in the public domain.

I would be very interested in corresponding with others trying to learn the
language, and posting source code problems and solutions.

The source code I have included in this file does the following:

1. Checks to make sure that gdos or speedogdos is loaded.
2. Loads the fonts from the hard drive.
3. Lists the fontnames, index and number on the screen.
4. Selects Dutch font, sets point size to 36 and colour to red
5. Prints yabadabadoo on the screen

Very simplistic, yet it might help some others avoid the frustrations
that I went through.

Tom Wilkinson
560 7 St. S.E.
Salmon Arm, British Columbia
Canada
V1E 4E6