Re: [ql-users] QPC2 umlauts
- Original Message -
From: "Marcel Kilgus" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [ql-users] QPC2 umlauts
>
> Geoff Wicks wrote:
> > I came across an interesting problem tonight when using QPC2 to type a
> > German text on a UK keyboard. Chr$(128) on the QL character set (ä) is
> > entered by CTRL + ESC. In Windows this is the keyboard shortcut for
> > displaying the start menu.
>
> Of course you can always redefine the keyboard layout. Some layouts
> also support the composition of characters.
>
> Or you can of course do something like
> ERT HOT_KEY('a', 'ä')
> ERT HOT_KEY('A', 'Ä')
>
Thanks for this reply and to all the others who offered suggestions. As far
as I can see it is only chr$(128) that has this problem, so a hotkey command
in a boot progam is probably the simplest solution.
The other suggestions are worth looking at when I have more time. I would
also add my plea for the Minerva type character formation to be incorporated
in SMSQ-E. It was one of the things I liked best about Minerva.
Geoff Wicks
[ql-users] QPC2 umlauts
I came across an interesting problem tonight when using QPC2 to type a German text on a UK keyboard. Chr$(128) on the QL character set (ä) is entered by CTRL + ESC. In Windows this is the keyboard shortcut for displaying the start menu. On my Windows98 machine Chr$(128) was entered in the QL document followed by the display of the Windows start menu. On my WindowsXP machine the character was not typed into the QL document and just the Windows start menu was displayed. No doubt German users do not have this problem as they have a dedicated keyboard, but does anyone a solution for we poor UK keyboard users? Geoff Wicks.
Re: [ql-users] Happy celebrations
- Original Message - From: "James Hunkins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [ql-users] Happy celebrations >What is really embarrassing is when someone from England reminds us in >the States just how bad our English is! I hate to say this, but many language experts believe USA English is more "pure" than UK English in that it is more like the English spoken 200 years ago. Just to make this on-topic, this is just part of the Just Words! service. Seasons greetings, Geoff Wicks.
Re: [ql-users] QL Calendar for 2003
- Original Message - From: "Malcolm Cadman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [ql-users] QL Calendar for 2003 > > Has anyone thought of doing of doing a QL Calendar ? > Jochen did one as a freebie in QL Today a couple of years ago, and I don't think he will ever do one again. It's much more work than you think and in spite of clear instructions about size and format of adverts, many traders did not stick to these. Geoff Wicks
Re: [ql-users] Software pirates in our midst?
- Original Message - From: "Norman Dunbar" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: [ql-users] Software pirates in our midst? > So, have you tried to communicate with D&D to find out if what you say is > true, or whether they have some other arrangments etc ? > If you have asked and not received any replies then there may well be a > problem and if so, it should be sorted out between the 'interested' parties > and not aired in public. If there does turn out to be a good reason, they > you may well end up with egg on your face. I believe you have put yourself > is a pretty awkward situation. > In fairness to Wolfgang let it be said that this is not a new problem. I have known about it for some weeks, and you can be certain that a lot of activity has gone on in the background to try to resolve the situation. One of the problems is that most QL traders find they often do not get replies to emails to D & D. This is not just over such things as SMSQ, but also emailings for QL shows. Some time ago D & D approached me about distributing some Just Words! programs with the Q60. I gave a fairly lengthy reply but never heard anything further. This I find unbusinesslike and discourteous. Let me add that I write this with the greatest of reluctance. I have known one half of D & D, Dennis Smith, for some years and have always valued his observations on my programs. The Q60 is the most exciting hardware development in recent years, and from what I have heard D & D are producing it to the highest standards. I wish them well. Surely an extra 10 Euros per machine is not much to ask? Geoff Wicks
[ql-users] Re: All Greek to me! (OT)
- Original Message - From: "Tony Firshman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> On Sun, 3 Nov 2002 at 02:07:14, =?windows-1253?Q?=D6=EF=DF=E2=EF=F2=20= D1.=20=CD=F4=FC=EA=EF=F2?= wrote: ^ and the Greek doesn't work here either (8-)# (Phoebus originated) @I hate to tell you this Tony, but the Greek reproduces beautifully in OE. (Quickly ducks below desk before flak arrives.) ... but Geoff, you are surely _not_ using Greek. What on earth is going on here. Reindeer language? @You may be nearer than you think. I wrote the email after arriving at 6:00 a.m. from Eindhoven, with nowhere open for breakfast other than McDonalds, no tube lines running and my train north not due for 3 1/2 hours. The only place open was the EasyInternet cafe. Guess the nationality of the proprieter! These Greeks get everywhere. We should give them back their marbles to play with! (Quickly ducks under desk again.) Geoff Wicks
Re: [ql-users] Q-Word
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [ql-users] Q-Word > > >Q-Word? I must have missed something here. What is it? > >> > > It's a Word puzzle game :-) You get a screen with mixed up letters and > you > find words in it... when you do so the tiles > > dissappear and a picture appears below them... It works with all > languages > Q-Typ dictionaries exist in :-) > > Sounds great. Id like to order now. How much? ;) > > Per > > Aim is to be around £15 - should be available in December, we hope :-) Does anyone have Santa's email address? Geoff Wicks _ Surf the Web without missing calls! Get MSN Broadband. http://resourcecenter.msn.com/access/plans/freeactivation.asp
Re: [ql-users] Parcelfarce
- Original Message - From: P Witte <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [ql-users] Parcelfarce > Since the purpose of this list is to communicate it can > hardly be OT discuss the basic mechanics of such > communication. I have already explained (at some > considerable length!) why I use Lookout Distress (good one!) > Unless you are clamouring for a reprint, would y'all please > desist from discriminatory remarks on this head as it serves > no useful purpose? If your email clients are so smart how > come you are not able to filter out the crap you dont want > to read? Anyway, this thread appears to me to be about how > the various clients mangle our messages in their various > ways and not about LD in particular. It should be a salutary > lesson to *everyone* that we cannot expect messages to > appear on other people's screens the way they appear on our > own. Hence the need for agreed standards (straight text > only) and clarity (formatting, quoting, editing) and that as > many fancy features as possible should be switched off > across the board, or suitable work-arounds devised (as I > have gently but futilely tried to demonstrate earlier in > this thread.) For the rest, Live and let Live! > > Per > Can I add to this that good communication involves snipping. Too many messages contain the entire original mail, when the reply is often to just a single sentence in the original. That's something that we can all do and is not dependent on our mailer,browser or how we format our text. Geoff Wicks
Re: [ql-users] Parcelfarce
- Original Message - From: Laurence Reeves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > I wonder. I can't be bothered to check, but does LookOut offer a similar > function - replace '>' with neat, continous nothing. > My experience with Outlook Express is that it is inconsistent. Even if you set it to indent with ">" it doesn't always do this. I have never discovered why or what circumstances, but then I have never bothered to investigate. Just a thought though. Could there be a difference if the original message was text only or HTML? By the way, how come you are getting away with this OT thread without anyone complaining ;-). Geoff Wicks
Re: [ql-users] HTML emails - what a pain !
- Original Message - From: Malcolm Cadman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [ql-users] HTML emails - what a pain ! > > Better to have plain text only for this list. > Also worth reminding that the etiquette of this list is no attachments. Then we know to be wary of any mailing with an attachment. BTW I received the virus 3 times, once as a "private" email from a member of this list. All three trapped and rendered harmless by Norton Geoff Wicks.
Re: [ql-users] Elgin marbles (Seriously OT)
- Original Message - From: Roy Wood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [ql-users] SMSQ Source upgrading, & assembling. > > In message > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Norman > Dunbar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes > > > >Seafield Primary School - Elgin. > >Elgin Academy - Elgin. > >Moray College of Further Education - Elgin. > Have you got any of those Elgin marbles left over from your school days > ? I hear the Greek government is looking for some. (Ducks as Phoebus > loads catapult) Now, now Roy, would the Mighty Dunbar ever lose his marbles?
Re: [ql-users] EasyPtr
- Original Message - From: Wolfgang Uhlig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [ql-users] EasyPtr > > On 16.06.2002 21:02:43, James Hunkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >As to the above suggestion for translation, I would very much appreciate > >an English version of it. Even though I am getting pretty comfortable > >with the pointer environment and Easy Ptr, I still have a few quirks > >that might be explained in the articles. And I know I have gone through > >a lot of trial and error that such articles may help others avoid. > > > >Jim > > I suggested a translation to Geoff Wicks because I know that he speaks German. > But I am aware of the fact that this would be a lot of work, because the articles are > about 20 A4-pages. > I myself neither have the time to translate it at the moment, nor is my English good enough, > I'm afraid, to do it well enough. > Actually I don't "speak" German, although I have some knowledge of it. Trying to speak it scares me stiff, which is a pity given how active Germans are in the QL community. My German is also not really up to translation standards, although I translated Marcel's article because I wanted to read it myself. Is there anyone else who could look at the articles and possibly others in the old German QL Today? If you like you can still send the articles to me and I can have a look at them. However the next two to three weeks are fully booked getting my new Just Words! program, AUTO-GRAPH ready. This is because of the need to meet advertising and copy deadlines so that I can finally put Dilwyn out of his misery. Poor fellow probably has nightmares of my "quiet smile". (Sorry Dilwyn, but I am always careful of you media hacks, ever since Melanie Phillips, yes she of the Daily Mail, twice quoted me when she was a young reporter on New Society. My fault, I shouldn't have made cynical comments to put her off the scent!) This discussion has given me an idea. Would anyone be interested in a workshop on using EasyPTR? The sort of thing I am thinking about is saying running a two hour workshop during a QL show, where those of us who have experience of EasyPTR could help others with their programs in the hope that we could encourage more people to try working with the program. We would need to structure it somehow. Anyone any ideas or opinions? Geoff Wicks Geoff Wicks
Re: [ql-users] Plight of a Software House
- Original Message - From: Roy Wood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [ql-users] Plight of a Software House > I have always given PEK (Pointer Environment Kit) away for free with > Easyptr. I do not think I have ever sold a copy of QPTR. > -- Indeed it all comes back. That's how I started to write pointer programs. Roy kept nagging me and sending me things like PEK until I could resist his demands no longer. Prior to that I had bought QPTR, but like practically eveyone else I could not understand it. It was the first thing I ever bought from Jochen Merz and, in spite of that, he has been taking money off me ever since. I now know that it was the words of the Mighty Dunbar incorporated in PEK that put me on the EasyPTR trail. The thought overwhelms me. I shall have to sit down and rest. Geoff Wicks
Re: [ql-users] Just another idea
- Original Message - From: dndsystems1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [ql-users] Just another idea > > Well D&D Systems with Peter and Claus had a great AGM. Trading was > good and we had no spare time to walk round really. We were talking to > people interested in the Q60 nearly all the time, where did the orders > come from if we spoke to no one?? Sunday was slow we only sold 2 Q60. > 3 or 4 customers actually collected their Q60 at the show as well, > great stuff. Where was the bad bit? > Pleased to hear it Dennis! I think trading was more difficult for the longer established traders, but then you are the most exciting new development for the QL. Since I wrote my comment one or two traders have commented that it was not so bad after all. I had a bad trading session at Manchester although one person who I helped over problems with setting up WIN_ disks on his QPC has since sent me a large order. One of the problems is that the QL has tended to become more and more concentrated in the South (East) of England, and frankly I know relatively few Northern QL-ers. I missed the people at Manchester who normally come up for a chat. That's how I get ideas for new projects.The answer is more shows in the North, but probably better to keep them as 1 day shows. Best Wishes, Geoff Wicks.
Re: [ql-users] Just another idea
- Original Message - From: Roy Wood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [ql-users] Just another idea > In the short period in which the Grafs > have operated they have managed to alienate most of the QL Traders to > the extent that the only people who wanted to talk to them at the > Manchester show were a few customers. If it was just me I would > understand but it was unanimous. Not entirely true. I know as a trader I have no axe with the Grafs to grind, but I had a lengthy and interesting conversation at Manchester with Claus. I had a difficult and unpleasant Manchester, but this was nothing to do with the Grafs. I think it is a bit dangerous to make them the scapegoats for the failure of a show that was difficult for all traders for other reasons. By the way, Sarah and John, if you follow this list don't be put off by these comments. You are right to insist that the QL needs a presence in the north of England and the way we improve the atmosphere (and sales!) at Manchester shows is by building up contacts so that the traders and (northern) punters know one another better. Geoff Wicks.
Re: [ql-users] QTYP
- Original Message - From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [ql-users] QTYP > > On 13 Jun 2002, at 19:45, Geoff Wicks wrote: > (...) > > and investigating > > possible QTYP bugs with Dietrich Buder get further delayed. > > This is typically the kind of bug I like to get my teeth into, so why > don't you let me know the problem? > I am surprised you have time for anything given the battering you have had in the last couple of weeks. The emails with Dietrich go back to the end of last year. He is writing a German QTYP dictionary and reported that above a certain size the file becomes corrupted. At first, possibly because of limitations in my German and Dietrich's English, I could not fully understand what he was describing. He then kindly wrote his emails in both German and English and I could follow what he was saying. Basically after a certain size, which is somewhere around 100,000 words, the QTYP_DED program "corrupts" the dictionary in that it does not change in size when new words are added, and when you attempt to reload it to add yet more words you get an "Invalid Dictionary" error message. I put "corrupt" between inverted commas because if you expand the dictionary the new words are still there and the word list itself is not corrupt. You can make a valid dictionary using the expanded word list. The corruption seems to be in QTYP internally recognising that new words have been added. I needed to do a lot of testing to explore the problem further, but did not have the time. There were also a few other problems that Deitrich mentioned. I can send you all Dietrich's email privately, but I am not sure how long it will take to get these together. > > > QLib/EasyPTR allows you to make some professional looking programs. > > It's just a pity that the latter is such a b*gg*r to learn. TurboPTR > > is worth looking at as an alternative. > > Just a (probably pretty stupid) question: is there anything that > stops you using TurboPTR with Qlib? This is probably a stupid answer, but I don't know! Basically TurboPTR does a similar job to Easy Menu in the EasyPTR suite. When you have designed your menu you can write a pointer program that can be compiled using Turbo, which was the point in writing TurboPTR. I never got beyond experimenting with TurboPTR. I tried adapting the menu of Spelling Crib using TurboPTR, but came across numerous problems, mainly because of overlapping windows. George addressed many of the problems. I then intended to write something simpler from scratch to test TurboPTR, but could not decide what to do, and eventually other priorities came in the way. I was a poor beta tester and George was very patient with me! Geoff Wicks
Re: [ql-users] EasyPTR formerly Plight of a Software House
- Original Message - From: Norman Dunbar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: [ql-users] Plight of a Software House > You wrote : > > >> QLib/EasyPTR allows you to make some professional looking programs. It's > >> just a pity that the latter is such a b*gg*r to learn. > > Have you seen the (excellent) tutorial that was published in Quanta and I > think is available on Dilwyn's web site, on using EasyPTR ? > I thoroughly recommend it :o) > By some strange coincidence would that tutorial be written by a certain Norman Dunbar? By an even stranger coincidence would that be the same Norman Dunbar who writes those obscure and lengthy articles in QL Today that no one understands? ;-) Seriously, I have forgotten whose aids I used when I first learnt EasyPTR, but without them I would never have succeeded. There is a huge step that has to be overcome in writing your first pointer program, and unexpected snakes in the grass. My first effort ran perfectly under old QL ROMs, Minerva, and SMSQ, but not SMSQ-E and I still don't know why. The pity is that this puts people off, but once you have got over that first step, writing more programs is much easier and you become addicted to the pointer environment. I still get problems that puzzle me, however. My new program contains a lot of sprites. If I call a sprite using SPRW and its name, it works the first time I call it but not the second and subsequent times. The secret is to use SPRA to find its address and then call it using SPRW and the address. There are lots of little things like this in EasyPTR that can make it confusing, particularly for the beginner. Geoff Wicks
Re: [ql-users] Plight of a Software House
- Original Message - From: P Witte <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [ql-users] Plight of a Software House > > George Gwilt writes: > > > > I have had some useful feedback from Geoff Wicks but from few others (if > > any!). Anyone who has suggestions that can be implemented will probably > find > > these incorporated in an update. Nice to hear that George appreciated my comments, and I can certainly testify from the experience that George listens to feedback and tries to incorporate your ideas in his work. At the time I did not feel that I was a particularly good QPTR tester as too many other things, including Just Words! development came in the way. This is all part of the problem. Most QL users are busy with their day jobs and other things and there is little time to give others feedback. (This also happens in the none QL world.) After a busy work period I am trying to catch up with a Just Words! backlog to get a new program out by the end of the month, and that means that a reply to an email from Al Boehm about pincodes and investigating possible QTYP bugs with Dietrich Buder get further delayed. I still have to look at a suggestion for Style-Check that Roy Wood emailed me over a year ago! > > Will this lead to a flood of new ideas? I find the best way to come up with new ideas is to get people talking at shows. Spelling-Crib was conceived in this way, as were a lot of changes to QL-2-PC Transfer. I am hoping to release another new product in the Autumn that from conversations at shows I think may interest some people. (However I am seriously behind schedule on that product.) I think we have to be realistic. We are unlikely to get any new major applications unless we can find some benefactor who would fund a programmer to write them. However less ambitious products are still possible and viable. With some products, such as QL-Rhymes, I say "If I sell ten I shall be happy. If I sell twenty I shall be ecstatic." (And I am very near to being happy. Ecstacy must wait!) Per wrote: > I did have a look at TurboPTR in the early days. But the problem for me is I > dont get on with Turbo! It wont compile anything Ive written these last ten > years without a complete re-design, which is why I gave it up in the first > place. > > I think it is great that you have taken on Turbo development. I download > every new version to keep an eye on how things are moving. A lot has been > achieved already. Its also the only S*Basic compiler thats going anywhere. > By writing TurboPTR you have made possible using Turbo in modern programs > and applications. > > For me personally, Ive had to make a choice and that choice is (at present) > QLib/EasyPTR. I very much hope though that there are enough others out there > to support you - practially, or at the very least by letting you know that > they do! For now, all I can offer is my appreciation. > This is similar to my experience. I spent a lot of time designing a house style for Just Words! and that would not be easy to transfer to Turbo. My main quibble with Turbo is that you cannot build machine code routines into a program in the way that is possible using REM $$asmb in Q-Liberator. QLib/EasyPTR allows you to make some professional looking programs. It's just a pity that the latter is such a b*gg*r to learn. TurboPTR is worth looking at as an alternative. Geoff Wicks
