Hi toml12953,
The main reason TB doesn't recognize the mouse wheel is that TB was written so long ago that there was no such thing as a mouse wheel, or even the mouse itself for that matter! The same is true concerning the "loss" of the source code, or at least the ability to decipher it. Lost long, long ago.
TB is not like typical "modern day" software, most of which is recently written with the authors and everyone else involved still alive and on the scene. If you search for the history of True basic, which actually started off in the '50-60's and became known as "Dartmouth BASIC", the original "easily human readible" computer language, I'm sure you will find it interesting. I first encountered BASIC (at the Naval Ordnance Lab 1967) when it was made available on a teletype machine, which had to be connected to the main frame via a phone line. That BASIC had all the matrix math in it then as it does now as "True Basic". All this was long before PC's and Windows ever existed. Bill Gates watered the language down for inclusion in the PC's, in order to appeal to "average houshold users", who could then write letters, store recipes, and do such things as that. There were many dialects of Basic on various brands of PC back in those days. Hewlett-Packard used their own version of Dartmouth BASIC (HP Basic) in their machines such as the HP-9830.
As a result of the watered-down PC versions, "Basic" got a bad reputation from serious programmers and computer users, as being a "nothing burger" language. The original authors, Kemeny and Kurtz, eventually marketed their Dartmouth BASIC for DOS as "True Basic"; with all of its original math features. Then later it was coupled with a method of making it compatible with the newly contrived "Windows" and "Apple" systems.
So the only thing that has been "evolving" over the years is this method of dealing with Windows. The actual core of the code is essentially unchanged from the original version, and it is highly improbable that it can ever be changed or brought up to modern day "software standards".
We are lucky enough to at least have an outfit which tries to keep True Basic available and as "alive" as possible given the circumstances. The current "TB Editor" which comes with the Version 6 was written by John Arscott, in an attempt to improve that which could be improved upon. Now even John appears to be unavailable to help deal with any issues which arise.
If one doesn't like this "v.6 Editor", or has trouble with it, the usual work-around is to use some other text editor. True Basic files are nothing but ASCII text files, and can be written on any text editor which writes plain ASCII text files. The extention doesn't even have to be ".tru" either, ".txt" will open and run if it is actually a TB program.
While I have not experienced the problems you mentioned (other than the "wheel" inconvenience) using the v6.007 Editor, I still prefer to use EditPad Lite or NotePad++. Those of course are "modern" text editors and have all sorts of convenient modern features. Additionally, one can also number the lines without having to clutter up the program code with archaic "line numbers" which were required in the most ancient versions of most Basic dialects.
Once a program has been written and saved, one can then double-click the TB System.exe can run the program. If there are errors, one just edits the text file (which I keep open in the text editor all the while), save it, and then run the TB System again. Quick, and works great. I keep the whole kaboodle on an external drive so when the hard disk finally fails, I lose nothing whatsoever.
Regards,
Mike C.