Some months ago now, I received a letter from Richard Taylor, who had written a Basic program editor in the form of a ROM image. I was pleased when he agreed to release the program as shareware, as it is a very professional piece of software.

There are various ways of editing programs written in BBC Basic, ranging from the simple cursor copying and editing facilities built into the micro, through various means of transferring the program into another format so that it may be edited in another program, like View, Wordwise or (in the case of the Master Series), the EDIT text editor. An alternative which became available some years ago was Acornsoft's Basic Editor, a ROM-based program which allowed programs to be edited in their native format, without conversion to plain ASCII text. This approach has a lot of advantages. It provided word processor-like facilities superior to the simplest cursor editing without the need for intermediate file saving and loading. Also, there was no need to hold two copies of the program in memory at the same time (one tokenised Basic, the other plain ASCII).

Richard's system, FABLE (an acronym for 'Fast Advanced Basic Line Editor'), takes the same approach as the Acornsoft ROM, but applies the pull-down menu style of a program like Computer Concepts' Interword, a very popular and usable system. Its feature list is impressive, including:

1. easy link to Basic, with optional Escape toggling and return to edit mode when an error occurs during a run of the program;
2. pop-up menu system, with quick control-key alternatives;
3. preferences and the current state of the editor can be saved, allowing it to be customised;
4. search & replace, with optional case sensitivity and wildcards;
5. marked section copy, delete, renumber and print functions.

Some of the features noted briefly above are more impressive when you use them than when you read about them, for example the Basic link system. If the option 'Return on Errors' is ticked on the 'BASIC Link' pop-up menu, any Basic error which is generated whilst a program is running will cause FABLE to be entered with the cursor on the offending program line, ready to be edited. Using this and other options, a program under development can be edited and tested frequently and easily, and the effects of a program change can be seen almost instantly.

There are some limitations to the program, depending on the machine you use. For Electron and Model B owners, the most important is likely to be that the program only works in Mode 0, so unless you have shadow RAM fitted, the maximum size of program which can be edited is limited. For Master users, the icon representations of program files in the load/save menus do not appear unless the files have an execution address of &8023, the default value for Basic II but not for Basic IV, and the extra keywords introduced in Basic IV are not recognised by the system (although I for one almost never use them). Basic programs without the correct icon will still load and save correctly, however.

If you are feeling ambitious, Richard has been kind enough to allow the full source code for FABLE to be distributed, so it would be possible to add extra facilities or correct the "Master icon" problem referred to above if you felt the desire and need. Five pages' worth of instructions are also included in the form of a spooled text file on the disc.

Richard actually marketed the program himself some time ago, but was a victim of timing when the market for commercial software for 8-bit machines was on the decline. However, it is a most professionally put together piece of work and deserves to be seen by a wider audience than has made use of it so far. The shareware payment requested is £5.00, which I think is very reasonable. I have already registered my copy.

Following my quick tour of the magazine discs from Beebug volumes 3, 4 and 5, I can now do the same for volume 2 thanks to the quick and helpful reactions of readers who saw a brief request for copies of those back issues which I was missing.

Thanks to everyone who sent me some or all of the software from the original tapes for volume 2; if anyone has the software from volume 1 transferred from the original tape to disc, I would be grateful for a copy to complete the collection. It would be good to keep all that software from becoming unavailable, as I still regularly hear from new users who have acquired a secondhand BBC Micro and are having difficulty locating software.

As well as looking through the software, I dug out my copies of the early magazines to refresh my memory. How different our concerns were in those days! Looking through the December 1983 issue, I remembered exactly why the magazine software was only available on tape. Cumana got a good review of their new disc drives, just introduced: but I wonder just how many people could afford to buy a (now standard) 80 track, double-sided disc drive at a price of £395.60 including VAT? if you were feeling really flush, you could splash out on a double drive unit, a snip at £734.85!

Enough of giving away my age; on to the software. Volume 2 saw the introduction of the CAD (Computer Aided Design) program everyone must know - ASTAAD. This program has changed quite a lot over the years, but the original was quite radical for its time - it refused to work with anything less than OS 1.2 which, I suppose, must then have been like demanding an Arc with 2Mb of RAM these days! Most software listings from that time guaranteed compatibility with OS 0.1 and OS 1.0, and if they didn't work with Basic I, there had to be a good reason why not.

Generally speaking, this was the time when programming exploration and creativity were reaching their peak on the BBC. A few techniques hadn't yet been invented or become as widely understood, but the mix of software and the quality were good. Volume 2 sported a greater proportion of programs which demonstrated the features of the computer than appear now, which is a source of nostalgia for us old hands and is something new if you come across it now for the first time. Most issues featured two games, usually of different styles, such as 'Killer Dice' (Poker) and 'Galactic Invasion', or "Block Blitz' and 'RayBox'. Apart from the regular games, though, the mix is as wide as you would expect from Beebug - anything from Home Accounts to a Bach Cantata, from 3D Bar Charts to a Percussion Machine.

Note: Beebug programs earlier than volume 6 are only available as PD software through BBC PD, not from Beebug.