This page covers the everyday mechanics of working with files in READYCode: the Folder Explorer, tabs, importing and exporting, and printing.
Opening a folder (File > Open Folder..., Ctrl+K Ctrl+O) populates the Explorer panel with a tree of its contents. Each item shows a color-coded badge and icon for its kind, folder, BASIC .prg, machine-language .prg, .d64/.d81 disk image, plain BASIC source .bas, or plain assembly/other file, so you can tell at a glance what you are looking at.
The tree supports the conventions you would expect from a modern editor: inline creation of new files, folders, and disk images; inline rename; drag-and-drop to move or embed items (see below); cut/copy/paste; delete; and Reveal in File Explorer to jump to the item in Windows Explorer. Right-click any item for its full context menu, including options to disassemble it or send it straight to a C64 Ultimate or VICE - see Transferring to Hardware and Emulators.
Every open file gets its own tab, showing the file name and a dot when there are unsaved changes.
- Reopen Closed Tab (Ctrl+Shift+T) keeps a short history of recently closed tabs.
- Restore previous session, a Preferences option, reopens exactly the tabs you had open (including which ones were in Hex Editor mode) the next time you launch READYCode.
- The tab context menu offers Close, Close Others, Close to the Right, Close Saved (Ctrl+K U), and Close All (Ctrl+K W).
- If enough tabs are open that they overflow the tab bar, a dropdown button appears to list and jump to any of them.
Within a tree, dragging an item onto a folder moves it there; dragging it onto a .d64/.d81 disk
image embeds it directly inside the image instead, assembling .asm/.s source or tokenizing .bas
source along the way. This works within and between both the local Folder Explorer and the C64U
Explorer.
Dragging files in from Windows Explorer works the same way: drop them on a folder to copy (or upload,
for the C64U Explorer) them in, or on a disk image to embed them. Dropped anywhere else in the window,
they open as new tabs instead - this fallback only accepts .prg files, and rejects the drop entirely
if any file in the selection isn't a .prg.
Save (Ctrl+S) and Save As... (Ctrl+Shift+S) always round-trip through the authentic file format for the type of file you have open: the real tokenized .prg binary for BASIC programs, plain PETSCII source text for .bas files, or plain assembly text for .asm/.s files. This is what keeps a saved BASIC program byte-for-byte compatible with what a real C64, or VICE, would produce - .bas is never tokenized, whether you're loading it, editing it, or saving it.
File > Export... and File > Import... are a separate, plain-text escape hatch: Export writes the active document out as a .txt file, and Import reads a .txt file into a new tab. Use these when you need a plain-text copy of your source, for example to share it somewhere that does not understand .prg files, rather than the authentic binary format.
File > Print... (Ctrl+P) and Print Preview... render the active document through the same PETSCII-accurate rendering used on screen, so BASIC listings print with the correct C64 graphics and control characters. Assembly files print in the same plain font used to edit them. Page Setup... opens the standard Windows dialog for paper size, margins, and orientation.