[Coco] DECB editor

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 09 December 2016 11:20:50 Ron Klein wrote:

> Hello,
>
> When entering BASIC code on the Coco, does anyone know of a utility
> that allows for easier editing of code rather than using the EDIT
> command or retyping an entire line?  Perhaps an editor that allows for
> full cursor movement, but loads into RAM somewhere that doesn't occupy
> that normal RAM space a BASIC program uses?  This editor would just
> become a new command to run as part of DECB?
>
> Thanks!

If you can find it on the net, a guy named Jake Commander, wrote an 
editor called CHROMKEY (IIRC, that was 30+ years back up my life log) 
published such a utility back when the old grey ghost wasn't old, but 
current production. It was in (I think) one of the earliest Hot CoCo 
magazines. When I used it extensively in 1985, before I was introduced 
to os9, I modified it to put the grey ghost into the all ram mode, and 
had it move itself to above DECB, so I could use all of the memory basic 
allowed. I had to patch it for coco2 use but it was only a 2 byte patch 
IIRC. That editor also used lowercase characters as keyword completion, 
reducing the typu's in my code at the time.  It may be exactly what you 
are looking for, however it would need some work to work on a coco3. It 
would fit with about 7k left over, in a single 8k "block" of coco3 
memory.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
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