No menus on the nspire
XXX->Varname (up to 16 chars IIRC) and that can be literally anything from matrices to strings to ints to floats
no way to display pics directly. Plotting points can be a method that takes forever. Also, there's no output command.

The best way I've found to do any sort of proper display method was the text box, or regular disp with matrices.

You should also become VERY familiar with the string commands:

Left()
Mid()
right()
str & str
instring()

See the nspire catalog for a syntax example. Left takes a number of chars starting from the left of a string and returns that substring. same goes for right. Mid is identical to the 84+ sub(). & is the equivalent of str+str in 84+ basic. Instring finds the position of one string inside of another, and returns a particular int (0 I think) if it doesn't find any. It gives the first one then stops, so multiples are undetected.

request and requeststr are the only ways of getting in-prog input, but there are also inline args when you run the program. ex. prog(a,b,c) where a b and c are vars of any type that become vars in your program.

Local var is a great way of avoiding variable collisions between progs, it makes it so a var doesn't affect a var by the same name outside the program. Example:

Out of program:
6->a

in program:
local a
"hello"->a
end program:

disp a
 - Returns 6

No way to exit PTT from basic that's one of the many uses for ndless. besides, you can't run basic progs from within PTT anyways, unless you make them on the spot.

I probably got one or two things wrong, but that's about as far as BASIC can go while remaining inside one program. If you're not afraid of using multiple programs

not yet but there's already a closed beta, so it can't be very far off.

Have you considered Lua? It's much better, being a real language and all. Not to mention faster. AND it can be programmed on-calc if you send the right progs.

hehe yeah...

TI was nice and gave us Lua to use on OSes above 2.1. I don't know much about it, but there's a ton of people on this forum who do (I stuck to 2.1 so I could keep ndless, but with ndless 3 I'll switch)

Also, you actually posted in the Lua subforum Change the title to "Getting started with Lua" or something similar and you'll be all set.

to make pictures, you can use all of the drawing commands, or you can convert a pic to a ti.image although this is realy large and re-drawing the screen will slow down
to make a menu...if you ever read the tibasicdev article on making custom menus thats basicly what you would have to do it in lua, as there isnt a
"Menu(" command
Lua is realy easy to learn everything is event/function based
Lua example:
function on.paint(gc)
    gc:setColorRGB(0, 0, 0)--set the color to black
    gc:drawRect(3, 3, 50, 50)--draws a rectangle on the screen with black lines
    gc:fillRect(100, 0, 50, 50)--makes a rectangle that is filled with the color black
endto find some tutorials go to: http://www.inspired-lua.org/
to get the official scripting tools go to: http://education.ti.com/educationportal/sites/US/nonProductSingle/nspire-scripting.html

you could make sprites, i would suggest using classes, but you would have to use one of the two methods i talked about above for drawing them

and it will be even faster soon

I see alot of people coding on the computer and transfering to the calc, but how would I program ON-Calc ?