By translating the codes from the system that we use, to the system
that your commercial software uses, you should be able to use
many of SR-10/15’s advanced features. It may help, however if
we look at a couple of examples.
n The escape code
-
There’s one particular ASCII code that we are going to be using
more than all the rest. This is ASCII 27, which is called escape.
With all of SR-10/15’s advanced features, there weren’t enough
single ASCII codes to go around. So escape is used to start se-
quences of control codes that open a wider range of functions
to us.
-
-
While you must call this code CHR$(27) in BASIC, we are
going to refer to it as < ESC > in this book. This will make it
much easier to recognize when we use it.
A typical escape code sequence starts with < ESC > which is
followed by one or more codes. As an example, the escape code
sequence to turn on emphasized print is:
<ESC> “E”
We’ll learn more about these escape code sequences and how
to use them in the chapters that follow.
n Using this book without learning BASIC
Throughout the latter part of this book we will be teaching
you how to use all of SR- 10/15’s features using the BASIC
programming language in our examples. This is because it is easy
-
to communicate with SR- 1 O/ 15 from BASIC and because, despite
its shortcomings, BASIC is the nearest thing to a universal lan-
-
guage among users of personal computers. But it’s not the only -
way to communicate with SR-10/15. Even if you don’t know
BASIC, you can learn how to use SR- 1 O/ 15’s features by reading
on. When you find a function that you want to use, just apply
what you already know about translating from one name for codes
to another. The examples will still show you how the commands
are used, even if you are not using BASIC.
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