The Basic Editor will prove familiar territory to users of the word processor View, although when authors Pete Morris and Chris Gibson originally brought it to Acornsoft, it bore more resemblance to Wordwise. BBC Basic as standard lacks a "full screen" editor and many programmers use wordprocessors to tidy up the look of programs for presentation. The Basic Editor makes this possible within a purpose-built environment.

From the original 8K program, Acornsoft have produced the Rolls Royce of Basic editors in a full 16K ROM. Get into The Basic Editor with *BE.

It has the feel of a very refined product, well planned and reflecting the experience of BBC Basic programmers.

The command screen/edit screen combination is well known and suits the application. Escape moves between them. LOAD, SAVE, OLD, RUN and other commands displayed on the Help menu are executed from the command screen. Within the editor the function keys provide those facilities shown on the card strip illustrated.

The cursor keys are used alone and in combination with CTRL and SHIFT for movements around the screen and program. These include fast cursor movement, top of the next screen, beginning of next statement, beginning of previous statement, first statement on screen, last on screen. SHIFT TAB takes you to the next line, TAB to the next (user-definable) TAB position. Movements to the top and bottom of the program are achieved with f2 and f3.

f0 toggles between overwrite and insert modes. Automatic line generation and, where necessary, renumbering, means that line numbers can almost be forgotten. A simple tap on the Return key generates a new line for insertion of a new statement.

Statements can be joined. The editor automatically inserts the separating colon and tells you if you are going beyond the line length limit. Indiscriminate crushing of lines together can result in a program that won't work so you have to be careful. The editor is better at making things clearer rather than more dense. Thus, you can also split multiple statement lines. The editor takes care of new line numbers and renumbering.

Swapping case, creating blank lines (discarded if unused at the end of a session), duplicating combinations of statements and marking lines for a quick GOTO marker, all involve single key strokes, are easy to use and provide valuable time-saving functions.

For anyone involved in Basic programming, and that's a great number of BBC users, the block copying, deleting and moving are remarkably useful. Unfortunately these operations are a little awkward to perform. It is necessary to insert "line commands" - typically one or two characters typed in while holding down the CTRL key. When typed in they appear in the left margin. There are specific commands for each type of move, copy and delete, e.g. C for single statement copy, CE for copy to end of program, CC for block copy and CCE for block copy to end of program.

There are other combinations. Moving a block of program text involves moving to the destination, holding down CTRL and B, moving to the start of the block, holding down CTRL and M, moving to the end of the block, holding down CTRL and MM, and then hitting f0 to perform the move. You need the excellent manual at first but even the number of keypresses described above doesn't stop you picking them up after a short session with the editor. However, if you are one of these people with a mental block about View, these aspects of the editor may appear unfriendly.

TAB stepping can be set to any value between 0 and 80 and the function keys defined with well-used command combinations, Basic keywords and so on (a lesson well learned from Wordwise).

A simple EXECable file can also be used to set you up in the colour combination and Mode of your choice. Commands BACK and FORE are supplied for naming your colour. Nor do you have to remember the numbers associated with each of the eight colours. Initial letters are used instead. These cosmetic choices don't always survive RUNning a program so a function key setup is a great time saver. Scrolling can be disabled from both screens for wraparound in the editor.

Apart from direct surgery to the program code displayed in the editor, there are various other features to be exploited.

The straightforward problem free merging of programs is catered for by the command APPEND. Any renumbering is automatic although RENUMBER line, step is always available from command and edit screens.

In the case of APPENDing programs GOTOs and GOSUBs can sometimes reference as yet nonexistent lines. In this, and other similar situations, the edit allows the use of special labels which replace line numbers as reference points. These are indicated by ? and the label name. Each label name has to have its corresponding label statement, a REM followed by ? and the label name. NUMBER automatically replaces labels with line numbers for RUNning.

Perhaps the greatest "labour saving devices" in an editor are the "search and replace" functions. The Basic Editor has an especially comprehensive range with EDIT, FIND, CHANGE and QCHANGE. It matches the ease with which programs can be scanned in the Logotron Logo editor.

EDIT string looks for all occurences of a string and presents them one at a time on the top line of the editor for your perusal and attention. Placing each occurence at the same screen position each time is much more convenient than having to follow a cursor around the screen as you have to in many similar programs. f5 moves on to the next occurence.

FIND string lists all occurences of the string, listing them in a paged mode. From this list you can choose to return to the command screen, top or bottom of the program, or to make the string listed at your cursor position. You can then return to the editor to edit a marked occurence or the occurence you are currently positioned at. In 16K, the programmers can afford to offer all the combinations!

CHANGE string string unconditionally (watch it!) replaces string one with string two. QCHANGE string string requires a Y or N answer at each occurence of string one that it finds before carrying out the change. QCHANGE is the less choosy of these two powerful options. L% for instance might be picked up in RL%. This would not happen in CHANGE (safety first!). Unlike a Logo editor, The Basic Editor has UNDO abilities limited to changes made to the current statement.

There are no wildcards but leading and trailing spaces can be incorporated into strings by just typing CHANGE or QCHANGE and replying to the prompts. The search string is remembered and the search continued at a later date, if you wish, with f5.

A quick glance at the editor functions and the HELP screen will reveal some considerable duplication of commands necessary in the dual screen format.

The Basic Editor is a tidy piece of software, going about its duties quickly and efficiently. It is second processor compatible and comes with an excellent 41-page manual with index. The price of £29.50 is very fair but rather leaves open the chance that potential purchasers will at least consider a Slave or BROM alternative. The editors in these two EPROMs however do not remotely compete with the specialised operation of The Basic Editor.