[Coco] Cursor movement programs for BASIC?

[Allen Huffman]

Starting out with a VIC-20, I was used to being able to cursor around the screen and make changes to my program that way. With the CoCo, I did not take an interest in it until Extended BASIC, then I switched to CoCo. Having all those LINE, PAINT, DRAW commands (even with less colors and sounds) was a much better pogromming experience than my VIC-20 with all its POKEs and PEEKs to do anything.

I ended up finding the EDIT command significantly faster for most things, though being able to cursor back up to a command line rather than type it again could be better on the VIC.

That said — I seem to recall there used to be cursor control programs for BASIC advertised in the magazines. Did anyone ever use any of those? Did they work well?

I have done a quick patch for BASIC that lets you embed cursor movements in a PRINT command, just like I could do with the VIC-20. While doing thing, I wondered what all was done “back then” with the other cursor movement programs. I wonder if they even supported embedded cursor controls, or just had some way to move the cursor and scan the line trying to find the last command to re-enter. (Tricky. Even the VIC has some bugs related to how they figure that out.)

		— A