What we need, I think, are new applications - and/or improvements to
existing ones - and programs that address the fact that the world has
changed considerably since the final collapse of the QL software market
(approx 8-5 years ago, depending on how you reckon). There are lots of,
mainly free, utilities out there: File finders, viewers, simple text
editors, calculators, etc, etc, but very few real applications that justify
so many utilities. Applications that people would like to use, and need to
use, would lead to all kinds of spin-off effects as we would then need more
drivers, tools and yes, utilities, which us wannabe programmers seem to
enjoy producing. Applications, however, are not easy to produce: You
need good programmers, or even teams of programmers, good tools, and
last but not least, a market for them! A catch 22 situation.
<< CUT>>
Sorry Rich, for hijacking your thread, but I do believe I have tried to
respond to part of your question, at least, in a very general way. I can
assure you all that if it had been possible for me to say all this in a few
snappy sentences, I would have!
I agree with per that we desparately need new full blown applications, - Tarquin's web-browser and Jim's QdT are both heading in the right direction and I hope that they will soon be released, whether as commercial programs or public domain. We do however, need to also encourage commercial development before the few software houses which remain (Mine, JMS, QCelt and QBranch are about the only ones left aren't they??) have to fold and cease to support the QL users that still exist. I wonder if any of us can remember the last trading year we actually made a profit!!
I think that to start the ball rolling, we need someone to take on the reins of easyptr - bring this up to date and possibly enhance it to create the bare bones of a SuperBASIC procedures to call the menus at least and cater with standard functions in menus, similar to how Visual Basic on the PC does things. This is surely not that a difficult task, as many users of the program will already have fairly standard PROCedures/FuNctions which they start of with... I have a library of ones which I have were based on the original series in Quanta on how to program EasyPtr and I have used these to good effect to produce Q-Help, Q-Index and Q-Route fairly rapidly.
Anyone willing to take this on??
Rich Mellor
RWAP Software
7 Common Road, Kinsley, Pontefract, West Yorkshire, WF9 5JR
TEL: 01977 614299
http://hometown.aol.co.uk/rwapsoftware
