The first thing you'll see when starting PC-BASIC is the working environment. Like GW-BASIC, but unlike practically all modern compilers and interpreters, PC-BASIC's working environment serves both as a development environment and as a canvas on which to execute BASIC commands directly. With a few exceptions, practically all commands that can be run in the working environment can be used in a program, and vice versa.
The default PC-BASIC screen has 25 rows and 80 columns. The 25th row is used by PC-BASIC to show keyboard shortcuts, which means you can't use it to type on. In some video modes, there are only 40 or 20 columns.
Logical lines exceed the width of the physical row: if you keep typing beyond the screen width, the text will wrap to the next line but PC-BASIC will still consider it part of the same line. A logical line can be at most 255 characters long; if you type more than 255 characters, it will ignore the remainder. A line can also be wrapped by a line-feed, entered with Ctrl+Enter.
If you press Enter, PC-BASIC will attempt to execute the logical line on which the cursor is placed as a command. When the command is executed correctly, PC-BASIC will display the prompt Ok. If there is an error, it will display an error message followed by Ok. If the line starts with a number, it will be stored as a program line. No prompt is displayed.
The following keys have a special effect in the working environment:
↑ or Ctrl+6 | Move the cursor up, except at the top row. |
↓ or Ctrl+- | Move the cursor down, except at row 24. |
← or Ctrl+] | Move the cursor left. The left edge of the screen wraps around, except at the top row. |
→ or Ctrl+/ | Move the cursor right. The right edge of the screen wraps around, except at row 24. |
Ctrl+← or Ctrl+B |
Move to the first letter of the previous word. Words consist of
letters A—Z and figures 0—9 .
|
Ctrl+→ or Ctrl+F | Move to the first letter of the next word. |
Tab or Ctrl+I | Move the cursor to the next tab stop. Tab stops are 8 columns wide. |
Backspace or Ctrl+H | Delete the character left of the cursor, shift all further characters on the logical line one position to the left and change the attributes of those characters to the current attribute. At the left edge of the screen, this does the same as Del. |
Del or Ctrl+Backspace | Delete the character at the cursor and shift all further characters one position to the left, changing attributes to current. |
Esc or Ctrl+[ | Delete the current logical line. |
Ctrl+End or Ctrl+E | Delete all characters from the cursor to the end of the logical line. |
Ctrl+Break or Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Scroll Lock | Jump to the first column of the next line, without executing or storing the line under the cursor. |
Enter or Ctrl+M | Execute or store the current logical line. The complete line on the screen is considered part of the command, even if you did not type it. A line starting with a number is stored as a program line. |
End or Ctrl+N | Move the cursor to the first position after the end of the logical line. |
Home or Ctrl+K | Move the cursor to the top left of the screen. |
Ctrl+Home or Ctrl+L | Clear the screen and move the cursor to the top left of the screen. |
Ctrl+Enter or Ctrl+J | Move to the first column of the next line, connecting the two lines into one logical line. |
Ctrl+G | Beep the speaker. |
Pause or Ctrl+Num Lock | Pause. Press another key to resume. The latter key press will not be detected by BASIC. |
Ctrl+Prt Sc | Toggle echoing screen output to the printer (or other device attached to LPT1: ). |
Shift+Prt Sc | Print the screen. |
Ins or Ctrl+R | Toggle insert mode. In insert mode, characters are inserted rather than overwritten at the current location. If insertion causes the line to extend the physical screen width, the logical line extends onto the next line. Arrow keys exit insert mode. |
When a program is started, the commands in the program are followed until the program quits and returns to direct mode or until user input is required. When a program is running, a few keys have immediate effect:
Pause or Ctrl+Num Lock | Pause execution. Press another key to resume. |
Ctrl+Break or Ctrl+Scroll Lock | Stop execution and return to direct mode. A Break message is printed. |
Ctrl+C |
If ctrl-c-break=True : stop execution and return to direct mode.
A Break message is printed.
|
If user input is required by the statements INPUT
, LINE INPUT
, or RANDOMIZE
,
most keys have the same effect as in direct mode. The following keys have a different effect:
Ctrl+Break or Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Scroll Lock | Stop execution and return to direct mode. A Break message is printed. |
Enter | Finish input and return to the previous mode. |
The function keys and the alt key can be used as keyboard shortcuts for some keywords. The default values for the function keys are:
F1 | LIST |
F2 | RUN Enter |
F3 | LOAD" |
F4 | SAVE" |
F5 | CONT Enter |
F6 | ,"LPT1:" Enter |
F7 | TRON Enter |
F8 | TROFF Enter |
F9 | KEY Space |
F10 | SCREEN 0,0,0 Enter |
The function key shortcuts can be redefined with the KEY
statement.
The shortcuts are displayed at the bottom of the screen.
The following keywords can be entered with Alt+first letter. The Alt shortcuts cannot be redefined.
In PC-BASIC, the F12 key can be used to enter special keys that are not present on some keyboards.
F12+B | Ctrl+Break |
F12+P | Pause |
F12+C | Caps Lock |
F12+N | Num Lock |
F12+S | Scroll Lock |
F12+H | Print Screen |
The F12 key can also be used in combination with the regular number keys and arrow keys to enter numbers from the numeric keypad. The F12 combinations are not present in GW-BASIC.
Furthermore, as in GW-BASIC, the Alt key can be used to enter characters by their code points (ASCII values). This is done by pressing the Alt key and typing the code point as a decimal value on the numeric keypad, then releasing the Alt key.
Unlike in GW-BASIC, you can copy and paste text to the clipboard. This can be done with the mouse or with the F11 key.
Operating the clipboard with the mouse works in the style of X11: Left button is select and copy; middle button is paste.
The following keyboard combinations also operate the clipboard:
F11+↑↓←→ | Select a screen region. |
F11+A | Select all. |
F11+C | Copy to clipboard. |
F11+V | Paste from clipboard. |
In PC-BASIC, F11+F toggles fullscreen mode.
Some key combinations may have a different effect than described above, depending on the operating system and the choice of interface to use with PC-BASIC.
prevent_close
option is set; F1
may open your operating system's help system. It may be possible to avoid
some of these effects by using the graphical interface in full-screen mode.
PC-BASIC can hold one BASIC program at a time in memory. To enter a program
line, start with a line number and enter BASIC commands after that.
The maximum length of a program line is 255 characters, including the line
number and any spaces. The program line will not be immediately executed, but
stored in the program. Program lines are sorted by line number, so that line
10
is executed before line 20
. All program
lines must have a line number. Line numbers range from 0
to 65535
inclusive.
It is not possible to enter a line number higher than 65529
, but these can
exist in loaded programs.
Within one program line, statements are separated by colons :
.
To run the program, type the command RUN
. PC-BASIC will now
execute all program lines in order inside the working environment. You cannot
move the cursor around or enter commands while the program is running. If and
when the program finishes, it will return control of the working environment to
you. You can interrupt a program at any time by using one of the key
combinations Ctrl+Break or Ctrl+Scroll
Lock. The program will stop immediately, print a Break
message and return control to you.
In GW-BASIC, you can not use Ctrl+C to interrupt a running program.
However, many modern keyboards do not have a Break or
Scroll Lock key, which would make it impossible to interrupt
a program that does not exit. Therefore, by default, PC-BASIC treats Ctrl+C
as if it were Ctrl+Break. Set the option ctrl-c-break=False
if you prefer the GW-BASIC style behaviour. When using the text-based or command-line interface,
this option is ignored.
A program can be stored on a drive by using the SAVE
command, in one of three ways:
SAVE "MYPROG",A
SAVE "MYPROG"
SAVE "MYPROG",P
In all three cases, the program will be written to the current working
directory with the name MYPROG.BAS
.
PC-BASIC can read and write Protected files created by GW-BASIC. Unlike
GW-BASIC, however, it does not disable accessing the unencrypted contents of the
file. The encryption used by GW-BASIC has been broken many decades ago, so
Protected mode offered little protection anyway; disallowing access is a small
security hazard as it would allow someone to send you a program that you cannot
inspect before running it. However, it is possible to disable access of
protected files by enabling the option hide-protected
.
You
can read a program file into memory with LOAD "MYPROG"
. This will
erase the program currently in memory and replace it with the one read from the
current working directory. To access files in a different directory, specify a path from the current
directory. The path specification follows DOS conventions. The only valid path
separator is the backslash \
. For example, LOAD "PROGRAMS\MYPROG"
.
You can load or run a program immediately on starting PC-BASIC by using the
load
or run
options.
For example,
pcbasic --run=MYPROG.BAS
The arguments to these options can be provided as PC-BASIC paths or as paths in the standard form for your operating system.
PC-BASIC can be used to convert between the three program formats: either by loading the program and saving
in your desired format, or from the command line using the convert
option. To convert a
tokenised or protected file to plain text you could use, for example:
pcbasic --convert=A PROGRAMP.BAS PROGRAMA.BAS
PC-BASIC emulates DOS disk devices, which are referred to by drive letters such as Z:
.
One of the drive letters is the current device.
On Windows:
C:\Program Files\PC-BASIC
,
Windows will move files written there to %LocalAppData%\VirtualStore
instead.
This is best avoided.
C:
on PC-BASIC is not always your Windows C:
drive.
By default, Windows drive letters are mapped to PC-BASIC devices at the start
of the PC-BASIC session. However, if you use the mount
option;
or if Windows drive letters change while PC-BASIC is running (through e.g. net use
or
Map Network Drive operations), they will no longer agree.
On other systems:
Z:
will point to the current working directory from where PC-BASIC was started.
It will be the current device.
˜
.
This current device is where files will be saved to and loaded from in BASIC if you do not specify another device.
You can change the current device using the current-device
option in the configuration file or on the command prompt.
You can map drives and other file system locations as PC-BASIC devices by
using the mount
option. For example,
on Windows, the option
mount=A:C:\Users\Me\BasicFloppy
will make the folder C:\Users\Me\BasicFloppy
available as PC-BASIC's A:
device.
On other platforms, an example mount option could look like
mount=A:/home/me/BasicFloppy
which would make the directory /home/me/BasicFloppy
available as PC-BASIC's A:
device.
PC-BASIC uses DOS conventions for filenames and paths. These are subtly different from Windows short filename conventions and not-so-subtly different from Unix conventions. This may lead to surprising effects in the presence of several files that match the same DOS name. To avoid such surprises, it's best to run PC-BASIC in a working directory of its own and use all-caps 8.3 format for all files.
Many BASIC dialects use the same extension .BAS
, but their files are not compatible.
PC-BASIC runs GW-BASIC program files only. Some tips to recognise GW-BASIC programs:
&hFF
.&hFE
.
In particular, QBASIC files (which have no line numbers) and QuickBASIC files
(magic byte &hFC
) will not run.
PC-BASIC will accept both DOS and Unix newline conventions for programs
stored as plain text.
This behaviour is different from GW-BASIC, which only
accepts text files with CR LF
line endings.
As a consequence, in exceptional cases where a program line is continued through LF
correct GW-BASIC text files may not be loaded correctly.
If you encounter such a case, use
the soft-linefeed
option to enable GW-BASIC behaviour. If
soft-linefeed
is enabled, text files in standard Unix format
(LF
line endings, no end-of-file character) will fail to load, as they do in GW-BASIC.
On Linux or Mac, use a utility such as
unix2dos
to convert programs saved as text files before loading them. When saving as text,
PC-BASIC always uses CR LF
line endings and &h1A
at end-of-file.
PC-BASIC can run packaged programs. A package is simply a directory or zip archive.
The directory or zipfile contents will be loaded as the current working
directory. If a configuration file named PCBASIC.INI
is present
inside this directory, its settings are loaded; usually, one of those settings will be a
run
argument linking to a BASIC program enclosed in the archive or directory.
PC-BASIC will recognise zipfiles regardless of their extension.
A suggested extension for PC-BASIC packages is .BAZ
.
Packages are a convenient choice if a program needs to change many PC-BASIC options
to function as desired, or if it needs a particular working directory setup.
Zipfile packages are unpacked to a temporary directory each time they are loaded. The temporary directory is removed when PC-BASIC closes. With zipfile packages, it is therefore not possible to save files and re-open them on the next run of the package.
The CAS1
device interfaces with the cassette tape emulator.
Tapes were never very popular on the IBM PC, and indeed only available with the
original PC and the PCjr. There are not many IBM PC cassettes in the wild.
However, should you come across one, all you have to do to read it with PC-BASIC
is record it into a .WAV
(RIFF WAVE) file and attach it to the CAS1:
device with the cas1=WAV:filename
option.
You can also generate your own tape images and store your programs on it. WAV
files generated by PC-BASIC are large but very easily compressed in a ZIP
archive; this works better and leads to smaller files than transcoding to a lossy
audio format like MP3
.
As an alternative to .WAV
, you can store tapes in CAS
format. This is simply a bit-dump of the tape and is interchangeable
with tape images for the PCE IBM PC emulator.
Previous versions of PC-BASIC included support for BASICODE cassettes; this has been discontinued in favour of a separate BASICODE decoder. Use this decoder to convert the BASICODE program to PC-BASIC format before loading it into PC-BASIC.
PC-BASIC makes some default choices with basic security in mind, but does not
sandbox its programs in any meaningful way. BASIC programs have more or less
full access to your computer. You should treat them with the same caution as
you would shell scripts or binaries. Therefore, do not run a program from the
internet that you have not inspected first using LIST
or
pcbasic --convert=A filename
on the command line. You wouldn't just download
an executable from the internet and run it either, right?
You can print from PC-BASIC programs
by accessing the LPT1:
device. PC-BASIC will send the output to
your operating system's default printer, unless you change the lpt1=
option. To print through a printer named MyPrinter
, set
lpt1=PRINTER:MyPrinter
. You can also attach printers to the
LPT2:
and LPT3:
devices.
The output will be sent to the printer when one of the following happens:
a file open to LPT1:
is closed, a program terminates, or PC-BASIC is closed.
If you prefer, you can instead send every page separately to the printer by setting
lpt1=PRINTER:MyPrinter:page
. You can even send every line separately, but
this only makes sense on a tractor-fed printer (as was common in GW-BASIC's heyday).
It's easy to print to a file instead of a printer:
set lpt1=FILE:output.txt
to send all LPT1:
printer output to the text file output.txt
.
The printing statements LPRINT
and LLIST
always send
their output to PC-BASIC's LPT1:
device.
The presentation of printed documents is left to your operating system: it will be the default presentation of text files. If you wist to change the way documents are printed, please refer to your OS's settings.
.txt
files; usually this is notepad.exe
. To change
the way PC-BASIC documents are printed, change the page setup
in that application. You will need to set a
printer font that includes the characters you need to print.
paps
utility if it is available; this will
automatically select fonts that support the characters you need.
PC-BASIC provides the serial devices COM1:
and COM2:
.
To make use of these, you need to attach them to a communications port on your
computer with the com1=
or com2=
option. To attach to
the first physical serial port, set com1=PORT:0
(or, alternatively,
com1=PORT:COM1
on Windows or
com1=PORT:/dev/ttyS0
on
Linux). If you do not have a serial port, you can emulate one by sending the
communications over a network socket: set com1=SOCKET:localhost:7000
and all COM1:
traffic will be sent through socket 7000
.
To access a parallel port, attach it to one of LPT1:
, LPT2:
or LPT3:
.
For example, set lpt2=PARPORT:0
to attach your computer's first
parallel port to LPT2:
.
By default, PC-BASIC emulates GW-BASIC on a system with VGA video capabilities.
However, it can emulate several other setups, which differ from each other in
terms of video and audio capacity, fonts, memory size, as well as available BASIC syntax.
The easiest way to set the emulation target is by using a preset
option.
For example, run pcbasic --preset=pcjr
.
Other available emulation target presets are:
Preset | Emulation target |
---|---|
pcjr |
IBM PCjr with Cartridge BASIC, including PCjr video and 3-voice sound capabilities and extended BASIC syntax. |
tandy |
Tandy 1000 with GW-BASIC, including Tandy video and 3-voice sound capabilities and extended BASIC syntax. |
olivetti |
Olivetti M24 or AT&T PC 6300. |
cga |
IBM or compatible with Color/Graphics Adapter and a composite monitor. This enables composite colorburst emulation. |
ega |
IBM or compatible with Extended Graphics Adapter. |
vga |
IBM or compatible with Video Graphics Array. |
mda |
IBM or compatible with Monochrome Display Adapter and green-tinted monochrome monitor. |
hercules |
IBM compatible with Hercules Graphics Adapter and green-tinted monochrome monitor. |
strict |
Choose strict compatibility with GW-BASIC over convenience, security, rhyme or reason. |
Presets are groups of options that are defined in the default configuration
file. You can create your own presets by creating a header in your private configuration
file with the name of the new preset, followed by the options you want to apply. For example,
if you define:
[my_preset]
you can now run
video=vga
syntax=pcjr
pcbasic --preset=my_preset
to start an emulation of
a hypothetical machine with a VGA video card running PCjr Cartridge BASIC.
PC-BASIC aims for a very high level of compatibility with GW-BASIC. However,
some compatibility features are disabled by default for convenience or security reasons.
These features can be switched on using individual command-line options. The highest level of
compatibility with GW-BASIC can be attained by setting
preset=strict
,
which switches off all convenience and security features that cause differences with
GW-BASIC.
PC-BASIC supports a large number of legacy codepages that were common at the
time GW-BASIC was popular, including double-byte character set codepages used
for Chinese, Japanese and Korean. You can select your codepage by using the
codepage=
option. For example, codepage=936
selects
the GBK codepage commonly used on the Chinese mainland. PC-BASIC will load and
save all program files as if encoded in the codepage you select.
It is also possible to load and save programs in a standard encoding
by enabling the text-encoding
option.
For example, if --text-encoding=utf-8
is set, plain-text program source
will be saved and loaded in standard UTF-8 encoding. Please note that you will still
need to select a codepage that provides all the Unicode characters that your program
needs.
Note that PC-BASIC does not implement the following features relevant to some of these codepages:
874
and 1258
) are therefore not
shown correctly: instead of being combined with their preceding base character as a single combined glyph,
such combinations will be shown as separate glyphs. Where available, alternative codepages with precomposed
characters will give better results. This affects code pages marked with C in the table.
The following codepages are available. PC-BASIC uses the Microsoft OEM codepage number where
this is unambiguous. The code pages are expected to agree with Microsoft sources for the ranges
&h80
–&hFF
. Ranges &h00
–&h1F
and &h7F
are implemented as the IBM Special Graphic Characters where some
code page sources will list these as the corresponding control characters.
For unofficial codepages and those with conflicting numbering, codepage
names are used instead of numbers.
codepage_id |
Codepage | Languages | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
437 |
DOS Latin USA | English | |
720 |
Transparent ASMO | Arabic | B |
737 |
DOS Greek | Greek | |
775 |
DOS Baltic Rim | Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian | |
850 |
DOS Latin 1 | Western European languages | |
851 |
DOS Greek 1 | Greek | |
852 |
DOS Latin 2 | Central European languages | |
853 |
DOS Latin 3 | Southern European languages | |
855 |
DOS Cyrillic 1 | Serbian, Macedonian and Bulgarian | |
856 |
DOS Hebrew | Hebrew | B |
857 |
DOS Latin 5 | Turkish | |
858 |
DOS Latin 1 with Euro | Western European languages | |
860 |
DOS Portuguese | Portuguese | |
861 |
DOS Icelandic | Icelandic | |
862 |
DOS Hebrew | Hebrew | B |
863 |
DOS Canadian French | French | |
864 |
DOS Arabic | Arabic | B |
865 |
DOS Nordic | Danish and Norwegian | |
866 |
DOS Cyrillic 2 | Russian | |
868 |
DOS Urdu | Urdu | B |
869 |
DOS Greek 2 | Greek | |
874 |
TIS-620 | Thai | C |
932 |
Shift-JIS (variant) | Japanese | |
934 |
DOS/V Korea | Korean | |
936 |
GBK; GB2312/EUC-CN superset | Simplified Chinese | |
938 |
DOS/V Taiwan | Traditional Chinese | |
949 |
IBM-PC Korea KS; EUC-KR superset | Korean | |
950 |
Big-5 (variant) | Traditional Chinese | |
1258 |
Vietnamese | Vietnamese | C |
alternativnyj |
GOST Alternativnyj Variant | Russian | |
armscii8a |
ArmSCII-8a; FreeDOS cp899 | Armenian | |
big5-2003 |
Big-5 (Taiwan 2003) | Traditional Chinese | |
big5-hkscs |
Big-5 (Hong Kong 2008) | Traditional Chinese | |
georgian-academy |
Academy Standard | Georgian | |
georgian-ps |
Parliament Standard | Georgian | |
iransystem |
Iran System | Persian | B |
kamenicky |
Kamenický; cp895 | Czech | |
koi8-r |
KOI8-R | Russian | |
koi8-ru |
KOI8-RU | Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian | |
koi8-u |
KOI8-U | Ukrainian, Russian | |
mazovia |
Mazovia; cp667, 991, 790 | Polish | |
mik |
MIK, FreeDOS cp3021 | Bulgarian | |
osnovnoj |
GOST Osnovnoj Variant | Russian | |
ruscii |
RUSCII | Ukrainian, Russian | |
russup3 |
Cornell Russian Support for DOS v3 | Russian | |
russup4ac |
Exceller Software Russian Support for DOS v4 Academic | Russian | |
russup4na |
Exceller Software Russian Support for DOS v4 Non-Academic | Russian | |
viscii |
VISCII, FreeDOS cp30006 | Vietnamese |
You can add custom codepages to PC-BASIC, by adding a file with
its mapping to Unicode to the codepage/
directory.
PC-BASIC emulates the distinctive raster fonts of IBM-compatible machines. The ROM fonts of the original IBM and Tandy adapters (which are in the public domain in a number of countries) have been included in PC-BASIC. These provide the most accurate emulation. However, the font ROMs only included a single code page – DOS Latin USA 437.
PC-BASIC defaults to a font which is very similar in style to the IBM VGA font but has support for many more code pages, in particular Western and Middle Eastern alphabets. Chinese, Japanese and Korean are supported through "fullwidth" glyphs which take the space of two regular characters.
It is possible to change the choice of font using the font=
option.
You can provide a list of fonts, where the last font specified is the
most preferred one.
PC-BASIC reads fonts in a variant of the .hex
format introduced by UniFont. It's
easy to define custom fonts in this format: it can be edited in a regular text editor.
See the UniFont project for an authoring tool. You can add custom fonts to PC-BASIC by
installing them into the font/
subdirectory of PC-BASIC's installation
directory.
By default, the following fonts are available:
font_name |
Name | Sizes | Codepages |
---|---|---|---|
default |
PC-BASIC default font | 8, 14, 16 | all bundled codepages |
cga |
IBM Colour/Graphics Adapter font | 8 | 437 only |
mda |
IBM Monochrome Display Adapter font | 14 | 437 only |
vga |
IBM Video Graphics Array font | 8, 14, 16 | 437 only |
olivetti |
Olivetti/AT&T font | 16 | 437 only |
tandy1 |
Tandy-1000 font old version | 8 | 437 only |
tandy2 |
Tandy-1000 font new version | 8 | 437 only |
If not all glyphs are found in the specified font(s), the default
font is used as a fallback.
The font names freedos
, univga
, and unifont
are treated as synonyms of default
unless a font with one of these names
is available. This behaviour is deprecated.
PC-BASIC supports redirecting input and output the GW-BASIC way: output redirected
with the output=
option will be sent to the screen as well as
the specified file, while input redirected with input=
is taken
only from the specified file. Note that screen output through the
SCRN:
device and keyboard input through the KYBD:
device are not redirected. Files are read and written in the codepage set with
PC-BASIC.
Note that it is also possible to use your operating system's facility to
redirect console output using the <
and >
operators. It's best to set interface=none
so that I/O is
redirected through the console. This will produce files in your console's standard encoding,
which is often UTF-8 on Unix and Windows-1252 on Windows.
You can run PC-BASIC as a
command-line interface by setting the interface=cli
(or
-b
) option. No window will be opened: you can type BASIC commands
straight into your Command Prompt/Terminal. Use the horizontal arrow keys to
move on the current line you're editing; use the vertical arrow keys to show
screen rows above and below. Copy and paste are available only if the calling
shell provides them. On Windows, Ctrl+Break will
terminate PC-BASIC immediately. You can use Ctrl+C to
interrupt the program. The end-of-file key combination
(Ctrl+D on Unix, Ctrl+Z on Windows)
will exit PC-BASIC.
You can use the command-line interface to run one or a few BASIC commands directly, like so:
me@mybox$ pcbasic -c '?1+1'
For scripting purposes, it is also possible to run PC-BASIC without any
interface by setting interface=none
or
-n
. If this is
set, PC-BASIC will take input from and send output to the console as UTF-8
without further modification. This is useful in combination with redirection and
pipes.
There is also a full-screen text interface available: enable it
by setting interface=text
(or -t
). The text-based
interface is very similar to the default graphical interface, but runs in your
Command Prompt or Terminal window.
Graphical screen modes can be used in text and command-line interface, but only the text on the screen will be visible. pre, many Ctrl and Alt key combinations are not available.
The text and command-line interfaces will attempt to use the PC speaker
for sound. Only single-voice sound can be produced this way.
On Linux systems under X11, you may need to install the beep
utility and
enable the PC-speaker driver or emulation; direct speaker access is often
limited to root or tty logins, and on Ubuntu systems it is disabled by default.