h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Allright ... its been a while scince i poseted anything to hootoo ... but im here all the time ... Anyway they question is simple, i am writing (what i hope will be) a simple program that will run ... baisicaly it will work like the guide did in the books, im going to write it in basic (GW-BASIC i belive) and then run it on several palm piolts (second hand) and delever them to some oh so wonderfully hitchhiker obsesed freinds at christmas (or a birthday ... or whatever holiday happens to be near when i finish) i picked basic because its ... basic and i can run it on the palm through one of several free interpreters ...

yeah ...

i need some help ... i don't know enough basic to do this kinda thing ... i can write some simple games and such ... and i guse i could do this ... but the code wouldnt be pretty ...
the phrase spegehtti comes to mind.

if anyone has anytips i would greatly apreciate it, or a source code i could work off of... or a sample of how to work it ... or jsut general encorage ment as this will be a large project, i would graetly apreciate it.([email protected], put somthing like the guide, or programing as the subject)

much thanks to whoever decides to help this poor lost hitchhiker

Do you know any programming languages at all? If not, you need to buy a beginner's guide to Basic and work your way through it. You can run GW-BASIC on any PC and it is a lot easier than doing it directly on the pilot. When you've got the hang of it, start trying it on the Pilot.

Programming is a tedious task and you need to be absolutely scrupulous about every single spelling mistake in your program. I can see from your posting that you are not very good at typing. You'll have to be a lot more careful than this if you are to learn how to program.

Good luck!

Traveller in Time not really getting a picture of the project
"A good idea is to write and or draw what you want to achieve before you start to program.
'The Guide like in the Books' is a bit broad to make a program of it.
Besides, in the books the Guide book talks to the users, not very simple to do in Basic and I suspect the 'Palm Pilot' to be very limited in some ways.
At < A604937 > 'The Programmers corner' some more reactions can be anticipated though take your time and do not expect too many on topic replies on your email address "

I can remember in the dim & distant past when i was at college we had to write BASIC programs on Commadore 64 PC's which were just a step up from the old ZX 80, 81 & Spectrum (which are probably collectors items now & didn't use real BASIC).

Anyway I digress but we were taught to draw up flow diagrams before we even started pushing any keys so you really need to know what you want to achieve i.e. the output from the program & what you need to put into it to achieve the desired output in terms of INPUT, then the parameters then the calculation & finally the output etc.

Each line of program has to start with a number usually 10 then each subsequent line is incremented in steps of say 10, this allows you to go back & insert lines of program between if the program has a gliche in it.

I can remember one of the most daunting programs I was given to write as part of my Electrical Engineering coursework, was to plot a fundemental sine wave & show that by adding subsequent odd or even harmonic waves to it the resultant wave took the form of a square wave or a sawtooth wave.

Programming in BASIC is rewardable but could be frustrating when the program wouldn't do what you expected usually due to some very minor syntax error, you have to be able to think through it in a logical way at the end of the day the computer is just following a set of commands in a sequence.

i actualy do know a thing or two about programing ... even programing in basic. ive worked with tads (text adventures) mainly and i actualy do have a pretty clear idea of what i want ... ill explain it this evning when i have more time.

ive draw pictures and diagrams and flow charts, and i was planing on starting just for the PC.

Talking ... is far to complex ... Baisicaly i want entries that atleast apear to be searchable and have some sort of 'computer graphics'.

i have given myself a (tenative) deadline of christmas, which i think might not be long enough to make sure everything is perfect, but i will try.


Thank you for all the wonderfull advice, and i welcom further sugestions. when it comes time to beta-test the inner workings of the program i know where to turn (that is of course i know where i can atleast look for some... finding them is another story all together.

Thanks again

--Almighty phill

Basically sounds like you want a database for the entries to be held in with a snazzy front end.

I presume if you have worked with text adventures you know how to hold the text and decide what text to put up next.

I'm no expert (having just started picking up MS Access Visual Basic over the past month having last programmed...over two decades ago on the ol' Speccy. Ag!!!) but would a string search of the entries give you the search capability? Though that will depend on the size of the database but splitting the entries down into modular searchable sections would speed that up.

I wouldn't contemplate trying to learn basic
You would be better off learning Qbasic.
This is very similar to basic
I wrote quite a few programs in basic on an Amstrad CPC6128 but when I switched to A PC I translated most of them to Qbasic
Don't believe anyone that tells you that you can't run a qbasic program on Windows XP
Its, 'spucatem tauri '
chequer

But can you run QBasic on a Palm?

No Idea

chequer

a database with a snazy front end is exactly what i want. Basicaly i want my freinds to have somthing they can goof around with. somthing to contain the humor of the guide fromt the book. i treid somthing menu based in INFORM but ... i didnt like it, and i ahve experemented with variouse ways to make it apear searchable, but i realy have no clue what im doing in that respect. BASIC is just that, and it has little graphical support (which im not sure if i would be able to use in anycase) which is why i chose GWbasic, but i have been considering other simular languages. (notable DOS and Qbasic)

Thank you for the sugestions.