JR-BASIC is a dialect of the

BASIC Basic or BASIC may refer to: Science and technology * BASIC, a computer programming language * Basic (chemistry), having the properties of a base * Basic access authentication, in HTTP Entertainment * Basic (film), ''Basic'' (film), a 2003 film ...

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running on the Matsushita JR series of microcomputers. Although it's its own dialect, it was designed to be mostly compatible with

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. Since it was developed for low-cost entry-level machines, it featured as few functions as possible, in order to save computer resources. Nevertheless, the

interpreter Interpreting is translation from a spoken or signed language into another language, usually in real time to facilitate live communication. It is distinguished from the translation of a written text, which can be more deliberative and make use o ...

was intended to be compact and efficient, with a feature-rich screen editor supporting direct execution of BASIC instructions. Commands were input by keywords - by pressing a combination of control and alphabet keys, a full command word would be entered. This was faster and more comfortable than typing words letter by letter, as the computer keyboard was poor (

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JR-BASIC 1.0

JR-BASIC 1.0 is the original version present on the JR-100 computer, released in 1981.

Specifications

Keyboard commands

Key combinations allowed the user to enter commands and control the onscreen basic interpreter.

JR-BASIC 5.0

The JR-200 model, released in 1983, came with JR-BASIC 5.0 that added extended functionally like graphical commands such as COLOR, (which selected character color, background color and display mode) and PLOT which permitted direct addressing of the low resolution graphics mode (64×48, using

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characters, which represented pixel blocks that used one-quarter of each character). Eight colors were available for the background and foreground use: blue, red, magenta, green, cyan, yellow, white and black. By re-programming a part of the character-set a limited high resolution graphics mode was achievable with a resolution of 256×192.

References

{{BASIC BASIC programming language Programming languages created in 1981 Discontinued BASICs BASIC programming language family BASIC interpreters

JR-BASIC 1.0

Specifications

Keyboard commands

JR-BASIC 5.0

See also

References