[Ql-Users] QL Today Vol 15,1 - UK
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 17:04:11 +0100 From: Ian Pineilp...@tesco.net To:ql-us...@q-v-d.com Subject: [Ql-Users] QL Today today Message-ID:beaddfc6a5dc439fb994a08983cb0...@weaselhp Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Yes, it did exactly what it says on the cover and arrived (UK) Today! Looking forward to reading part 4 of 25 Years but haven't had the chance for anything more than a glance through yet. Mine arrived 30th September also! On the subject of electronic vs. paper copy, electronic would certainly be convenient for archiving - I don't have enough storage space to keep back issues of the paper version - but I'm more likely to read cover to cover a paper copy; if it were just available on a website I probably wouldn't get around to looking at every issue. Please keep the paper version for the time being! The Future (or, oh what is to become of my Q40?) My Q40 is still working perfectly reliably and I even get a decent enough image on an HP Pavilion f1523 LCD monitor if I shrink #0 to 4 text lines. In Mode 8 the image is very good (except circles are elliptical), but this is not the problem. The Q40 is now the only computer I have which has a floppy-disk drive; it is also the only computer I have with an RS232 style serial port and the only one with a parallel port. So while I still enjoy writing my own programs and trying out those in the magazine, all the effort typing it all in is going to be wasted if I can't get the stuff off for backup or transfer to an emulator when it eventually bites the dust. Is this the future of the Q40/Q60? I could buy a USB Floppy drive (if they are still made and are reasonably priced) for the PC but no guarantee it will read Q40 formatted disks. What about the CF reader/writer? If I got one and formatted a card with a SMSQ file system, is there any software for the PC that could extract the files from it? I have a USB floppy drive for a PC (Windows 7, 64 bit, quad core processor) on which I run QPC2. I use it to transfer data and text files to QPC2 and thence to PC if needed, using Just Words QLPC programme for text and csv files for databases which can easily be read into e.g. Excel after using a little (Sbasic) utility I wrote to change line-end codes from QDOS to DOS type. The largest database I moved contained full names and addresses of about 150 people with about another 7 fields against each name. I will add something to the thread on Archive books. Peter ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] QL Today today
On 30 Sep 2010, at 17:04, Ian Pine wrote: I could buy a USB Floppy drive (if they are still made and are reasonably priced) for the PC but no guarantee it will read Q40 formatted disks. What about the CF reader/writer? If I got one and formatted a card with a SMSQ file system, is there any software for the PC that could extract the files from it? I frequently transfer information between the Q60 and QPC2 by means of floppies, either DD or HD. Only occasionally a file is unreadable by QPC2 having been written by the Q60 but this can happen between different readers whatever the computer and is no great problem. George ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
[Ql-Users] Archive Documentation
Dilwyn Jones wrote: I wonder if Urs K?nig happens to have a copy in his archive of old Sinclair stuff? Even I know many software and documentation Chas Dillon was involved with, I have never heard of this one. I searched my pile of QL files for *archiv*doc all I found are two documents archive1_doc (66 pages) and archive2_doc (110 pages). They are part of the QL-PD CD-R. I could not find an author listed in those documents, so it could be Chas work or not. Alf and Dilwyn could check the content and state if it's what was seeked for. No I'm afraid it's not. Those are the main Xchange Archive documents. Although they are quite useful in their own right! I'll see if I can get in touch with Simon, though. I don't think he's on this list. Dilwyn Jones I have in my overfull cupboard of QL magazines a booklet (103 A5 pages) entitled Notes on Psion's QL Archive by Charles Dillon, published by IQLUG, Milton Keynes. It imagine it was printed on using a dot-matrix printer and reduced to A5 in copying. The resulting character size is about 8 point(?) with not very distinct outlines. Of course it can be scanned; I am not sure an OCR programme will give a good result though and I think that is what may be needed for a worthwhile digital archive. Is this what others are seeking? I found this book an excellent reference when I was first setting up a large database with its own programme written in the Archive language. Peter ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] Archive Documentation
On 01/10/2010 11:34, Peter Baily wrote: Dilwyn Jones wrote: I wonder if Urs K?nig happens to have a copy in his archive of old Sinclair stuff? Even I know many software and documentation Chas Dillon was involved with, I have never heard of this one. I searched my pile of QL files for *archiv*doc all I found are two documents archive1_doc (66 pages) and archive2_doc (110 pages). They are part of the QL-PD CD-R. I could not find an author listed in those documents, so it could be Chas work or not. Alf and Dilwyn could check the content and state if it's what was seeked for. No I'm afraid it's not. Those are the main Xchange Archive documents. Although they are quite useful in their own right! I'll see if I can get in touch with Simon, though. I don't think he's on this list. Dilwyn Jones I have in my overfull cupboard of QL magazines a booklet (103 A5 pages) entitled Notes on Psion's QL Archive by Charles Dillon, published by IQLUG, Milton Keynes. It imagine it was printed on using a dot-matrix printer and reduced to A5 in copying. The resulting character size is about 8 point(?) with not very distinct outlines. Of course it can be scanned; I am not sure an OCR programme will give a good result though and I think that is what may be needed for a worthwhile digital archive. Is this what others are seeking? I found this book an excellent reference when I was first setting up a large database with its own programme written in the Archive language. Peter ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm Hi Peter, Yes, that is what Alf was seeking - ideally it needs to be scanned in - I doubt OCR will work on it unfortunately, but at least a PDF would be useful if only to add to the Quanta website for Quanta members! Otherwise, Alf would be willing to purchase it if it is for sale! -- Rich Mellor RWAP Services http://www.rwapsoftware.co.uk http://www.rwapservices.co.uk -- Try out our new site: http://sellmyretro.com ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
[Ql-Users] Geek Time! Linus Torvalds and Jeremy Allison talk on the Sinclair QL
Two famous ex QL'ers who made a difference in the IT world met at LinuxCon in Sao Paolo, Brazil recently. On a spare minute at an excursion to the Sao Paolo zoo they had a chat about their experiences with the Sinclair QL. This has been filmed by Jeremy and the video is on YouTube now. Watch it! http://tinyurl.com/ql-videos (third video under Favorites) BTW: End of last year I set up a web page about Linus QL contribution GMOVE. http://tinyurl.com/Linus-QL Jeremy's QL best known QL contributions are ARC and PDQC which are still available in many PD libraries. Cheers, Urs QLvsJAGUAR - Much more than retro! - Always remember: QL forever! Website: http://www.qlvsjaguar.homepage.bluewin.ch Videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/QLvsJaguar Pictures: http://cid-c250d8748980ce5a.photos.live.com/albums.aspx ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] Geek Time! Linus Torvalds and Jeremy Allison talk on the Sinclair QL
On 1 Oct 2010, at 13:20, Urs Koenig (QL) wrote: Two famous ex QL'ers who made a difference in the IT world met at LinuxCon in Sao Paolo, Brazil recently. On a spare minute at an excursion to the Sao Paolo zoo they had a chat about their experiences with the Sinclair QL. This has been filmed by Jeremy and the video is on YouTube now. Watch it! Very interesting. George ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] Archive Documentation
I have in my overfull cupboard of QL magazines a booklet (103 A5 pages) entitled Notes on Psion's QL Archive by Charles Dillon, published by IQLUG, Milton Keynes. It imagine it was printed on using a dot-matrix printer and reduced to A5 in copying. The resulting character size is about 8 point(?) with not very distinct outlines. Of course it can be scanned; I am not sure an OCR programme will give a good result though and I think that is what may be needed for a worthwhile digital archive. Is this what others are seeking? I found this book an excellent reference when I was first setting up a large database with its own programme written in the Archive language. Peter Hi Peter, Yes, that is what Alf was seeking - ideally it needs to be scanned in - I doubt OCR will work on it unfortunately, but at least a PDF would be useful if only to add to the Quanta website for Quanta members! Otherwise, Alf would be willing to purchase it if it is for sale! -- Rich Mellor Yes, this is definitely the book sought. Even if it couldn't be OCRed it might still be useful to scan it graphically, or perhaps the text OCRed as best as possible and the listings scanned graphically until original copies of the program listings on disk can be found. Sadly, at 103 pages it's likely to be a huge job for whoever tries it. I don't know if Chas Dillon would be happy for us to resurrect this book either. Some more modern OCR programs will scan direct to a PDF or Word file, with the output being largely searchable text, with a suprising degree of accuracy. My program is pretty old (Abbey FineReader 5) and works well with conventional fonts like Times New Roman, Helvetica and COurier, but does badly with dot matrix printouts (and presumably with 1985 dot matrix reduced to A5 would be even worse). I suspect that as Rich implies we wouldn't get good results from OCR, it might actually be quicker to manually retype the text pages than correct OCR output even :-( Dilwyn Jones ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
