Help Files

[efgee]

Hello,
As I'm starting to get my feet wet with oxygen I realized there was no "proper" documentation yet (at least I could not find it, except 4 doc (bas) file with overlapping information).

Because oxygen seems to have the potential to become a very nice and powerful compiler I started to create html help files (this way they can be easily expanded with more pages and menus) for it.

Until now it's just a collection of information found at this forum; and far more work needs to be done.
Just wanted to ask if such work is (maybe) already underway, or if I'm on the right track and (more) documentation would be welcome.

As I get along I stumble over some questions that I would like to incorporate into the help files (actually the answers...):

What is the difference of O2 and O2H? (in some files both are mentioned)

Are all keywords, functions, macros accessible from the outside? (through thinBasic or directly)

Oxygen is a jit compiler for scripting languages (especially thinBasic) but when programs are created with co2 is the oxygen dll still used as a jit compiler?
Or is native compilation done and the oxygen dll is used as a runtime dll? (didn't find any import functions of the oxygen dll inside co2 compiled programs though)

Surely as I find time to expand these help files I will have more questions...

Anyway this is it for now.

Talk to you guys later
efgee

BTW: any input welcome...

EDIT
Retracted the help files as they are unnecessary; Charles has this already covered.

[Charles Pegge]

Hi efgee,

Many thanks! I welcome your input.

Oxygen is still in its alpha phase but I hope to bring it to a point of stability in about four months time and produce a proper manual. At present, I am putting it through a series of fitness tests to see how it stands up as a language when exposed to a variety of APIs.

O2 refers to an earlier phase of development when Oxygem was an Assembler/Linker. O2H added the Basic language as a layer on top. The #basic or #o2h directives activate Basic functionality.

You will find a CHM manual for O2 in the thinBasic\help folder.

Compiled Oxygen files generally rely on thinBasic_Oxygen.dll to access the runtime library but there is a #Independent mode which allows the run time library to be compiled from source directly into the application, making it self-sufficient. I have used this mode to compile the first 64bit Executables (Very limited library at this stage).

I am documenting the Language reference in one of the source code files: currently o2keyw.bas. This contains all the primary keywords used by Oxygen (except for Asm instructions), with their internal codings and descriptive database which can be used to generate the manual automatically.

Doing it this way will keep the manual content synchronised, whatever the format - whether plain text, HTML or CHM.

Charles

[efgee]

...I am documenting the Language reference in one of the source code files: currently o2keyw.bas. This contains all the primary keywords used by Oxygen (except for Asm instructions), with their internal codings and descriptive database which can be used to generate the manual automatically.

Doing it this way will keep the manual content synchronised, whatever the format - whether plain text, HTML or CHM.


Charles,

I thought that the oxygen documentation is outdated as the name asmosphere popped up...
Also that manual (from gleaning over it) talkes about how to access it from thinBasic.
I'm on the other hand interested how to interface with oxygen through co2 (directly).

Well, if you are already working on a manual I will stay out of your way and concentrate on finding the information in the file you mentioned or ask stupid questions in this forum.

Thank you
efgee