The following message should be of interest to GFA Basic enthusiasts. It
was posted to my local club BBS a couple of days ago.
*************************************************************************
Technical/Programing / NeST GFA BASIC, #39 of 47
Date: 10 Oct 92  21:59:08
From: Peter Kocourek of 90:4001/0.17
To:   All
Subj: News from Richter; GFA 4.0

Hi everybody!

On Saturday, the third of October, a meeting of GFA-programmers was held
with experienced users in Germany, where the future development of GFA
Basic was thrashed out. It was specifically intended that the views of
"real world" GFA programmers be taken into account. The following
information I take from a message in the German GFABASIC.GER echo, by
Lars-Thorsten Sudmann, who is connected to the firm Richter, which has
taken over the development of the ST version of GFA Basic. The "real" GFA
company will no longer be involved with the ST.

The new reprogrammed GFA Basic, currently under the name "4.0", will have
a small compiler, which can create stand-alone applications quickly. For
more experienced programmers, there will be a GFA to C converter, the code
of which can then be used by many C compilers, on many computer systems.
Named were MS-DOS, Windows and Unix.

The management of variables will be changed, so that the problems caused
by garbage collections moving variables around will be obviated. All
commands in the new version will be based on "clean" OS calls, and the
dirty low-level stuff that plagues GFA Basic now will be abolished.
Downward compatibility will be maintained, including the Line A calls;
however, these will be redirected to the proper VDI routines. The new
documentation will contain programming advice and guidelines for GEM.

Old versions of GFA Basic used to gobble up all available memory. This
will be changed, so that programs will only allocate the minimum
necessary.  Requests for more memory will in some cases be made by GFA
transparantly, while the OS Malloc-functions will be available too.

The new version will also support modular programming; you can split up
your source code into smaller parts, just like in C or Modula-2, greatly
enhancing the readability and maintainance of the code. C-like structures
are also planned, but may not be included in the first new version.
Function libraries will be available too, and useable from the
interpreter.

The file functions will now allow the usage of real GEMDOS filehandles,
and errorcodes, removing the cumbersome old way of doing things.

The editor will be rewritten completely. The new editor will at last be
fully GEM, and it allows multiple source codes to be edited
simultaneously. It will also feature on-line help, and a multitude of
options, so that its behavior can be fine-tuned to the wishes of the
programmer. Keyboard shortcuts will in large part be the same as in older
versions; shift F10 will still be "Run."

The programming team intends to work as quickly as possible; while
obviously no firm date can be given at this time, Richter hopes to be able
to make further announcements about the progress before the end of the
year.

Suggestions, bug reports and ideas can be sent to Ulf Dunkel % MAUS OS,
Fido 2:242/2.6. He is also in charge of writing the documentation for GFA
4.0.

All that remains for me is to mention the address of Richter:

    Richter Distributor,
    Hagenerstrasse 65,
    5820 Gevelsberg,
    Germany.

    Phone: + 49 2332 2706
    Fax: +49 2332 2703
