Letter to the Editor

Congratulations for one of the finest (if not THE finest), and most informative User’s Group Newsletter, that I have seen. I am a connoisseur of newsletters; therefore should know whereof I speak. I get four different User’s Groups newsletters from the B.C.S., one from a dealer, two from a National organization, one from a publisher in New Hampshire, and recently bought seven issues of QUANTA, which I haven’t been able to read yet.

The reason I applaud your latest effort is because of its clarity. As you know, I am housebound and cannot attend any of the B.C. S. meetings, although I have been a member for several years. I started PC-ing with the ZX-80; then the ZX-81, when the ZX-80 destroyed itself.

I should have stuck with the ZX-81 because that, after things got complicated.

I graduated to a CP/M machine which couldn’t do anything unless a couple of disks were loaded into the maws of its drives. The instruction nanuals were numerous and not written for the layman. It could employ four different Basic languages, which relied on disk-loaded operating systems. I never became conversant with any one them because a veritable hail of programs on disks became available through dealers who bombarded me with their catalogues and I obtained many from the Public Domain.

Then Sinclair cozened me into buying QL. I succumbed because of my experience with the ZX machines, which I had learned to regret abandoning.

I soon regretted my purchase, however, chielly bacause of the weight, awkward bulk and writing style of the User’s Manual. Terms were used that couldn’t understand and there was a dearth of examples like your “e.g.s” in the article on using SuperBASIC ‘COPY’.

The only fault with your article was that you did not emphasize the need to read the article with the computer ON. It all seemed so clear when I read it, but I didn’t teach my hands to use the new knowledge until much later. I am reminded of Sophocles’ ancient dictum: “Although you may think you know a thing. you can never be certain unt11 you actually do it.”

Mike Mitchell’s (no relation) experience with his QL 15 Just the opposite of mine. I’ve had mine for two years – going on three now – and have only partially mastered Quill and if it hadn’t been for your Tax-I-QL, I wouldn’t even have tried to use Abacus.

I host a QL subgroup meeting on a bi-monthly basis, and have benefitted greatly by getting to know you and Henry Apr1l and the others. However, I don’t learn much at the QL sub-group meetings here because of my poor eyesight and deafness, but I look forward to them as a high point in my dull existence.

I keep comparing the QL to the CP/M computer that I have and the QL comes off “second best”.

A disturbing slowness existe in Quill which causes some funny effects when following a fast typist. Furthermore there are several features in my CP/M Perfect Writer word processor program that I wish were in Quill. For instance there is no Global Replace ability – which takes less than two seconds in a 14,000 byte letter 1n Perfect Writer.

(You may want to learn about TEXT87, an review of which 1s elsewhere. Ed.]

Likewise, I can move a block of text marked at its beggining and its end with two key strokes and cursor movement. I agree that the sane can be done 1n Quill, but you have to wait until each letter is blocked out in white at the rate of about 1 per second.

I haven’t tried to move large blocks around in a single file, but I have merged a portion of one file into another, by deleting what I didn’t want to move, naming the portion differently and merging. In the Perfect Writer program this is done with two windows and is very fast.

Keep up the GOOD work.
John Mitchell
Westwood, MA