Mallard BASIC is a

BASIC interpreter A BASIC interpreter is an interpreter that enables users to enter and run programs in the BASIC language and was, for the first part of the microcomputer era, the default application that computers would launch. Users were expected to use the BAS ...

for CP/M produced by Locomotive Software and supplied with the

Amstrad PCW The Amstrad PCW series is a range of personal computers produced by United Kingdom, British company Amstrad from 1985 to 1998, and also sold under licence in Europe as the "Joyce" by the German electronics company Schneider Computer Division, Schne ...

range of small business computers, the

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as the ''ZX81 Colou ...

+3 version of CP/M Plus, and the

Acorn The acorn, or oaknut, is the nut of the oaks and their close relatives (genera '' Quercus'' and ''Lithocarpus'', in the family Fagaceae). It usually contains one seed (occasionally two seeds), enclosed in a tough, leathery shell, and bo ...

BBC Micro The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an empha ...

's Zilog Z80 second processor. In the 1980s, it was standard industry practice to bundle a BASIC interpreter with microcomputers, and the PCW followed this practice. While the PCW was primarily a dedicated

word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Word processor (electronic device), Early word processors were stand-alone devices ded ...

for business use running LocoScript, it was running on top of the CP/M

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

. There were many existing implementations of BASIC for CP/M, such as

Digital Research Digital Research, Inc. (DR or DRI) was a company created by Gary Kildall to market and develop his CP/M operating system and related 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit systems like MP/M, Concurrent DOS, FlexOS, Multiuser DOS, DOS Plus, DR DOS ...

's CBASIC and the third-party ZBasic, but they followed the earlier 1970s model of

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...

s that were fed

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prepared in a separate

text editor A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. Such programs are sometimes known as "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be u ...

. BASIC was not built-in in these cases, the user would prepare a program and then invoke BASIC to run it. In contrast, home computers of the era had moved to using BASIC as the primary interface for the machine. Instead of booting into CP/M or a similar OS, these machines booted directly into a BASIC normally stored on ROM. These also included a built-in screen editor. Mallard was based on this model, with an integrated editor that was tailored for the PCW's non-standard 90-column screen. Although the PCW actually had excellent monochrome graphics support for its time and specification, closely comparable to the

Hercules Graphics Card The Hercules Graphics Card (HGC) is a computer graphics controller made by Hercules Computer Technology, Inc. that combines IBM's text-only MDA display standard with a bitmapped graphics mode. This allows the HGC to offer both high-quality text ...

for

IBM PC compatible IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones ...

computers, Mallard BASIC had no graphics support whatsoever. Instead, Locomotive Software optimised it for business use, with, for instance, full ISAM random-access file support, making it easier to write database applications. It was also optimised for speed — it is named after the LNER Class A4 4468 Mallard locomotive, the fastest steam locomotive in the world, once again displaying the company's fondness for railway-oriented nomenclature. In fact, the Locomotive Software name came from the phrase "to run like a train" and it was this theme that was used to name Mallard BASIC — no other Locomotive Software product was named after anything railway-oriented. The Acorn version was designed simply to run the Compact Software small business accounting products Acorn was including to target its Z80 second processor at small businesses. Mallard's major innovation designed specifically for Acorn was the addition of the Jetsam B*-tree keyed access filing system to give similar (but superior) features to the Miksam product Compact had originally designed around. Graphics could be implemented by loading the GSX extension to CP/M, but this was cumbersome for BASIC programmers. The lack of graphics support was rectified by several BASIC toolkits, of which the most popular was Lightning Extended BASIC (LEB — see external links). This patched Mallard BASIC, replacing the redundant LET keyword with LEB, which could be followed by a wide variety of parameters to allow sophisticated graphics (for the time) to be drawn on screen, saved to disc, printed, and so on. Probably the most widespread Mallard application ever was RPED, the text editor supplied with the PCW. The name was short for Roland Perry's EDitor, the program having been quickly written by Roland Perry, the Amstrad executive running the computer product development, when it was realised that CP/M-80 came with no usable full-screen editor, but users had a requirement to edit configuration files. The same problem was apparent with DOS Plus and

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few oper ...

supplied with IBM-compatible Amstrad computers, but the RPED for those machines was written in

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assembler, and not Mallard BASIC. The IBM PC version of Mallard Basic is still available from LocoScript Software as an MS-DOS program, which will run under Windows as a disc-only version with licence or with the full Introduction & Reference manual.

External links

Mallard BASIC
– Mallard BASIC manual from the Spectrum +3 CP/M Plus package

by Geoffrey Childs, author of LEB (PCW-World, 1990) {{BASIC BASIC interpreters CP/M software ZX Spectrum software BASIC programming language family

See also

External links