_Basil's early hisory - for those interested

[Conception

 I have wanted shared BASIC libraries since RiscOS 2 and multi-tasking came along. I played around with libraries and had quite an extensive system of overlays some years back.

 After a being very busy I came back to programming recently and picked up the overlay idea with view to getting the library code to take no more than 16k of memory in any program. This got complicated.

 I then came across a couple of discussions in Newsgroups that stimulated the present program.
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[Versions 0.10+ (Jul 1997)

 This used a ResourceFS register program (my own, but any would have done) to put library files in Resources. From BASIC I could then find the actual addresses of the files in memory using OS_FSControl and link them to INSTALLLIST as an unmanaged list.
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[Versions 0.20+ (Aug 1997)

 This still put the files in Resources but I added some code to set system variables to point to the addresses without having to search for them.
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[Versions 0.30+ (Aug-Sep 1997)

 This kept a pair of system variables but I realised it was unnecessary to put files in Resources and I also used a core module and extension modules.

 None of these versions was ever finished, although they all worked more or less.
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[Versions 0.40-0.75 (Sep 1997)

 These took essentially the same form as version 0.80, with a core module providing the linking and with library modules calling routines in the core to install themselves. The many changes were due to dead-end ideas, to learning more assembler as I went along and honing the code.
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[Version  0.80beta (08 Sep 1997)

 This was to be the first public release. BUT ...
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[Version  0.92beta (23 Sep 1997) - first release to testers

 My increasing confidence with assembler and a better understanding of RiscOS persuaded me that the most appropriate method would be as a core module with a separate area of RMA for each library. This is a development from 0.30+ and it is gratifyingly neat and economical. Not all problems are solved, but it seems robust and ready to be tested.  Find and Lose are dealt with by BASIC procedures as it is easier to handle the string searches that way.
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[Version  0.99beta (16 Nov 1997) - first general release

 The functions of Basil are now in assembler. The core library has a selection of 'useful' routines. Whether to keep, or extend, these is the main unresolved question.

 Version checking may be implemented in future versions, but will be compatible with programs written for this version.
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