[Coco] A bug in Basic09/RunB

[Wayne Campbell]

Gene,

I see you were involved in solar tracking. How far back were you able to go? 
Were you able to establish cycles in lunar patterns in relation to the 
constellations and the position of the earth relative to the sun? Or were 
you just plotting lunar cycles? I'm not good enough at all the math to 
understand all of it, but I am interested in these things.

As to "the Church", don't forget all the backward empires that have ruled 
this planet, and how they have held back progress in the name of their own 
gain.

Anyway, I understand that your need was greater than Basic09 could deliver. 
That is too bad. I believe that the way Basic09 was designed lends itself to 
the ablility to write comple code, with comple structures, that can perform 
at or near machine level speed, depending on the runtime module, or lack 
thereof.

Wayne

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gene Heskett" <gene.heskett at verizon.net>
To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Monday, December 07, 2009 9:30 PM
Subject: Re: [Coco] A bug in Basic09/RunB


> On Monday 07 December 2009, Wayne Campbell wrote:
>>Gene,
>>
>>I have looked at the structure of the REAL variables in Basic09 and OSK
>>Basic. I compared them to each other, and to the definition of a float and
>> a double in OS-9 C. From what I could tell, you can convert a Basic09 
>> REAL
>> to a C float, or a C double, by writing a subroutine in C. Did you ever
>> try something like that?
>
> No, sorry Wayne.  I didn't see the utility for that application in doing 
> that
> (checking lunar and solar eclipse times, in this case all the way back to
> when Julian time breaks down completely in 4713 BC).  The real in b09 
> gives,
> IIRC, about an 8 digit accuracy, whereas the C functions returned a 16 to 
> 17
> digit accuracy.  All my C math for that was done in doubles and it seemed 
> to
> agree with the historical times quoted for a couple hundred years back, 
> and
> before that our timekeeping was a little fuzzy.  Real progress in that 
> dept.
> was seriously hindered by the church who had an earth centric view of the
> universe for at least a millenium, and men went slobbering to their graves
> trying to make the math fit the facts they could see in the sky.
>
> Throwing away many decades(digits) of accuracy didn't seem like the thing 
> to
> do at the time and all I was really doing was scratching an itch. 
> Climbing
> the mountain because it was there so to speak. :)
>
> [...]
>
> -- 
> Cheers, Gene
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
> soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
> The NRA is offering FREE Associate memberships to anyone who wants them.
> <https://www.nrahq.org/nrabonus/accept-membership.asp>
>
> Juall's Law on Nice Guys:
> Nice guys don't always finish last; sometimes they don't finish.
> Sometimes they don't even get a chance to start!
>
> --
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco