gw-basic-2026/docs/roadmap.md

Roadmap

Planned Features

• PRINT USING edge cases — Thousands separator (,), ** asterisk fill, **$ combined, ^^^^ scientific notation, & full-string format
• Binary SAVE/LOAD — Protected (,P) and tokenized binary formats
• DEF SEG / PEEK / POKE — Memory-mapped I/O emulation for common BIOS/screen addresses
• Compatibility testing — Automated test suite comparing output against original GWBASIC.EXE under DOSBox-X
• GET/PUT — Sprite capture and blit for graphics mode

IDE and Notebook Integration

• Jupyter kernel for GW-BASIC — A Jupyter Notebook kernel that runs GW-BASIC programs cell-by-cell, with rich output for PRINT, inline graphics rendering for drawing commands, and interactive INPUT via notebook widgets. Similar in spirit to foxkernel.
• JetBrains plugin (IntelliJ/CLion) — Full-featured language plugin with syntax highlighting, code completion, line number navigation, run configurations, debugger integration (breakpoints via STOP, variable inspection), structure view (line number outline), and error annotations.
• VS Code extension — Language extension providing syntax highlighting (TextMate grammar), snippets, run/debug tasks, integrated terminal runner, and Language Server Protocol support for diagnostics and hover info.

Known Limitations

• No binary/protected file format support (ASCII only)
• PEEK/POKE are no-ops
• String garbage collection not implemented (uses malloc/free instead)
• Maximum 256 variables, 64 arrays, 16 FOR nesting, 24 GOSUB nesting