hello vintzend,
What you said is pretty much exactly the case.
I think a fellow named Sweeney was the last to know how to work on those files which had to do with the dll's and Windows API calls, etc. Another fellow well acquainted with the whole thing is John Arscott, who composed the new Editor that v6 has. He also authored and marketed a nice set of Libraries which included improvements to the True CTRL and True DIAL features. We need both of them back to help answer some of these questions which are continually popping up, and possibly to help otherwise.
But the development of TB "core code" ITSELF essentially stopped at its first implementation as Dartmouth basic in the early '60's. The original "BASIC" computer language which Kemeny and Kurtz invented was used by CEIR on their teletype machines, then by HP on their machines, then when "PC"s were introduced, MS (and various other) forms of the language emerged with watered-down math features. Soon the inventors K and K decided to market their BASIC under the name "True BASIC" and its first implementation worked under DOS.
When Windows was introduced, libraries of stuff to adapt the "core code" to windows (and to MACs) were written, and these files were supplied with the core TB exe file, which still had the original machine language in it. Unfortunately, the ability to interpret the machine language code was lost, and consequently changing the code has never been possible.
The very first windows version required that certain dll's had to accompany all bound .exe programs in order for them to run. This was the case up until version 5.5, which had a modified file which attempted to remove this dll requirement. While the file did in fact do this, it sadly had a few bugs (again, this is NOT in the core code). In my opinion, removing the dll requirement was not at all worth the bugs that got introduced. The last "bug free" version I know of was SILVER 5.33, which I usually use. I have them all up to and including GOLD 5.5b19.
The language is way too convenient, powerful, useful, and easy to work with in spite of some of its archaic features; and has too many good built-in features to ever be withdrawn from the market. It has all the math stuff anyone could want. I have been using Dartmouth BASIC in various forms since 1967; on CEIR teletype machines, on various HP systems, and after the advent of it as "true BASIC", on PC's; right on up to the present. There are work-arounds to alleviate most of its "un-modern" features. There has never been anything that I couldn't find some way to do using this language. Well, I take that back, once I had to write something in BBC BASIC in order to PLAY a MIDI file without having to chain to some widows midi player. But the MIDI file composing program itself was written in True Basic.
And yes there should be a list of all the problems the v6. seems to be having. Meanwhile I'll just stick with the ol' 5.33.
Regards,
Mike C.