[Ql-Users] Life In the Old Dogs Yet . . .
OK, so I know this isn't specifically about the QL, but it does go to show there is some life in the old machines yet: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10951040 Actually, my two boys - 6 and 7 - love playing my vintage machines ! ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] QL Today today
Afternoon Wolfgang, That should take all of 6 minutes: 1 minute : take the staples off put pages them in my scanner. 2 minutes scan even pages 2 minutes scan odd pages 1 minute prepare PDF... I could do that when QL Today gets here. I could do that as well with my scanner here, or even better, at work with the big one. However, that would build a PDF with bitmaps for pages - be they PNG or TIFF etc - and we want to avoid that. To me, a PDF file containing magazine text, or book text etc, should be: * Searchable - bitmap pages are not. * Copy paste'able. Again, bitmap pages are not. * Small! So, we only need the scanner to get the pages as images for an OCR to extract the text - I'm not sure how an OCR would treat the two column arrangement on some pages - and then use the text to build a new PDF file that is all of the above. As I mentioned, my 228 page pdf book is currently 890Kb in size, so a copy of QL Today with 40 pages could be somewhere around 160KB which is pretty good even if you are running an internet connection on a 56K modem! (I used to download the entire binary and source discs for C68 from Dave Walker when I was the Quanta C68 Librarian on a 1440 Modem. That was a task for Sunday afternoons when dial up was cheap rate!) I wonder if it's possible to get hold of the entire set of (possibly unedited) source files, in whatever format they come in, for one issue of QL Today just to see how much work is needed and how big the finished PDF will be. I have experimented with Open Office and it makes the use of mixed single and double column page formats - as in the latest QL Today - simple. Design the document on single page layout, select the text you want in two columns and Format-Columns and pick two, set the gutter size, OK. Job done! No need for fancy publishing software, and a PDF can be created by clicking one button. And the generated PDF is all of the above as well - searchable, cut paste etc. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Geoff and Jochen *must* create a PDF, I'm simply saying that it should be possible and the created files will not need to be bitmapped pages and extremely large with poor quality. Cheers, Norman. ___ 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
Urs Koenig (QL) wrote, on 1/Oct/10 13:20 | Oct1: 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. I particularly like LT's throw away answer - Did you use GST Macro Assembler No I wrote my own. He also liked to run programs from ROM ... as they ran faster than from ram, which has contentions. He was a *real* software geek. I would have loved to hear him and Laurence Reeves (and Tony Tebby of course) chatting. Lau also wrote his own (Microchip) assembler when developing superHermes. The Microchip assembler was awful in many respects, not least forbidding '_' in labels and not having a linker. It all came to a head though when we found major problems, which just *had* to be the chip itself. Can we see the asm please We only have it in our own QL based assembler. Lau spent a good month rewriting it under their assembler, and of course it compiled identical code. Tony -- QBBS (QL fido BBS 2:257/67) +44(0)1442-828255 t...@firshman.co.uk http://firshman.co.uk Voice: +44(0)1442-828254 Fax: +44(0)1442-828255 Skype: tonyfirshman TF Services, 29 Longfield Road, TRING, Herts, HP23 4DG ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] QL Today today
No need for fancy publishing software, and a PDF can be created by clicking one button. And the generated PDF is all of the above as well - searchable, cut paste etc. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Geoff and Jochen *must* create a PDF, I'm simply saying that it should be possible and the created files will not need to be bitmapped pages and extremely large with poor quality. Cheers, Norman. Hi Norman, As you say, that is what the PDF is designed to do, to make documents portable, and keep to a relatively small file size; whilst giving good quality. Isn't the Writer version, though, quite expensive? The Reader is supplied for free - just copy from a CD/DVD with supplied with a computer magazine, or download from the web. In other words, not entirely without a cost. -- Malcolm Cadman There are some free and low cost PDF writers out there. The simplest are basically printer drivers for Windows programs - select the PDF driver as the current printer driver and print to it. Usually, it will swallow the printed output then pop up to ask you to enter a filename. Never tried using these from QPC - I wonder if the current Windows printer driver was set to the PDF output one, and QPC was set to use the default Windows driver, would printed output from QPC in effect generate a PDF instead of a printout? Something for someone with the time to try I guess! I use the Nitro PDF program I got from Computeractive site IIRC, I have used packages like PDF995 and RoboPDF before today also. There are plenty of free PDF handlers, although some of them are free versions which while they will create PDFs, they might put a logo as a watermark or footer or something (remember how Line Design demo version did that?) Equally, Windows has a Generic/Text Only driver. Say you need to extract text from a PDF file or Word DOC file, select the Generic/Text Only driver (you may have to go through the Add Drivers dialogue as it is not installed by default) then just Print from Adobe Reader or Word or whatever, result is a quick text file without the fomatting. Handy when you need to transfer text to a QPC program, and when text only is good enough. Dilwyn Jones ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] QL Today today
Dilwyn Jones wrote: Never tried using these from QPC - I wonder if the current Windows printer driver was set to the PDF output one, and QPC was set to use the default Windows driver, would printed output from QPC in effect generate a PDF instead of a printout? This works! I use this to generate PDFs from QPLQ and I use the freePDF printer driver for Windows. Cheers...Ralf ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
