With over six hundred powerful instructions in the AMOS Professional repertoire, the system provides everything needed to produce commercial quality programs for the Amiga.
AMOS Professional programmers are able to exploit the system to its limits, but it is impossible to predict the needs of every programmer for every occasion. In order to allow the system to evolve, and cater for every possible requirement, AMOS Professional has the unique ability to accept extra commands and integrate them into the existing system.
These additional features are called "extensions", they are written in machine code, and they can be permanently installed into AMOS Professional using [Set Editor Setup] from the Configuration Menu. Once loaded, they extend the power of the system even further, providing any number of new instructions for the use of the professional programmer.
Extension commands are treated in exactly the same way as any of the built-in AMOS Professional instructions, and they can return values, enter parameters and access the screen as normal.
You have undoubtedly used extension commands already. For example, type in this simple instruction from Direct mode:
E> Bell
BELL is not a built-in command at all! In actual fact, it is part of a separate MUSIC extension, which contains all of the music, sound and sample commands used by AMOS Professional. The full source code for these instructions can be examined in the "AMOSPro_Tutorial:Extensions/Music.s" file.
The publishers have already produced a number of extremely powerful extension packages, such as the AMOS Compiler and AMOS-3D, and expanded versions of these programs will enhance your AMOS Professional programs even further!
Extension programming is well within the reach of most assembly language programmers, and help is readily available to overcome most problems via the AMOS User group, details of which can be found at the end of this User Guide.
For newcomers to assembly language programming, machine code procedures may provide easier access to expanding the system, because these allow you to develop routines with the minimum of effort and then use them immediately in AMOS Professional programs. After a little experience, you should be able to expand these routines into fully working extensions.
AMOS has a very impressive history, and now AMOS Professional looks forward to an exciting future. Writing original extensions will make you an important part of this development, and the time to create the future is now!