It has suddenly become very quiet on the QL-users list - nothing to read for
four days now. Has everyone logged off for Christmas? Here's a little
something to occupy your minds and time between the season's festivities:
Having purchased Launchpad and QWord as well as updated my SMSQ/E and QPac2,
my system does not run as well as it used to. The basic principles have
remained unchanged since I used two Aurora/SGC/QuBide machines at work and
in order to keep all the database files (.dbf) up to date, these two
machines were networked across the office - slow but very reliable I found.
I have always started off with the obligatory "boot" file in which I LRESPR
just about every toolkit etc imaginable and set up my ALTKEYs etc. I then
provide the option of installing SMSQ - the Accounts package 'Cash Trader'
would not run under SMSQ - hence the reason for giving the option. At the
end of the "boot" programme, I EXed a QLiberated SuperBASIC programme called
"GENERAL_MENU_obj" which includes a clock correction prog and then a menu to
provide one of five options plus a 'Return to SuperBASIC' from which I could
do all the things a basic machine could do, or something specific like
'Family Trees' - Genealogy - or 'Scouting'. Having retired 4 years ago, I
have now decided to get rid of all the 'Company System' stuff and substitute
all the Quanta stuff I have either inherited or have written during the last
couple of years - at present "QUANTA" runs from floppies only. Over the last
few years - gosh, how time flies once one has retired! - I have made various
half hearted attempts to get all my QL stuff installed on the PC running
QPC2 - now have 3V11 installed - only to find that any reference to
networking (nfs_use etc) causes an error. So, the whole thing needs sorting
out.
Where do I start? (From the beginning! - "boot")?
How do I know which toolkits and extensions are required for which
programmes and which programmes load their own extensions? (Could this cause
duplicate entries if the same toolkit is loaded twice, or use up unnecessary
memory?) Is there any way of uninstalling an extension once loaded?
Since SMSQ causes a complete reset when loaded, should I be loading toolkits
after SMSQ or before (in case I want to use QDOS) or both ('cos if it's all
lost when SMSQ loads it would only be loaded once anyway)?
Has anyone got any pearls of wisdom to offer?
Have a GREAT Christmas everyone and happy QLing in 2004
John Gilpin.
