The QL Today news notes which I send to the ZQA! Editor from time to time are obviously reports on reports and reviews that appear in recent issues of that Newsletter. I don’t intend this to be like some of the “talking heads” on TV today who seem to be only reporting on the opinions of other reporters instead of researching the actual news sources. What I’m trying to say here is that I hope these brief reports on QL Today news items will stir up interest among some QL users so they will want to “go to the source” and subscribe to QL Today themselves. It should go without saying that only if there is continued support for those who are supplying information, hardware, software, and services will these things continue to be available, here, as well as overseas.
One factor some state as a reason/excuse for not buying their own subscription to QL Today (presently DM75 or £30) is the difficulty of converting currencies — no problem when plastic is used. The first of the year marked the introduction of the Euro dollar — sort of. For a time it will be used only for electronic transfers and exchanges, not as actual currency. Also, for the time being the UK has opted out of participation with the eleven members of the European community who are on board, so the British pound is still “the coin of the realm” in all transactions made there. Apparently, all this is giving headaches among European QL users as well as those here in making currency conversions, so an Italian users group has created a neat little QLiberator-compiled routine that only requires entering either the value of the Euros or any of the eleven local currencies in order to convert either way it runs fine under QPC and SMSQ/E. It even has a multi-tasking sleep mode that is toggled on/off by CTRL C.
This routine is included among the programs and listings that are on the bonus QL Today Cover Disk that comes with each final volume-issue of the newsletter, VOL. 3, No. 6 in this case. All the published listings, an annual index of articles, and several of the freeware programs reviewed during the preceding year are also on the 3½” floppy in zip-compressed files, as well as the UNZIP program.
The current Cover Disk includes an update (v.TUTK3c27) of the code module for TurboToolkit, along with many demo plug-in procedures which utilize this toolkit. Also on the disk is a full version of Mark Knight’s K-BASE (v.2.20), which utilizes Turbo Toolkit and was compiled under the Turbo compiler. This multi-tasking card-index style database program is designed principally for quick and easy access to records such as address lists, inventories, etc. and will store and process up to 32767 records. It has a comprehensive and clearly-written manual, stored in ASCII, and has received very positive reviews. It runs fine under QXL or QPC and SMSQ/E as well as Trump Card or Gold Card expansions of the QL.
A new upgrade of the Perfection wordprocessor is likely to be released as freeware, but beta-testing of it was not yet completed at the time the current Cover Disk was made up. one of the features of this version is that high resolution screens are used properly, so you may pre-configure large windows if you wish.
In other news, Richard Zidlicky, the author of uQLx emulator for Unix/Linus based machines, has ported Linux-68k to the newly-released Q40 (the hardware replacement for the QL, with a fast 68040 processor). This raises the interesting possibility that the Q40 itself might be able to run a QL emulator under Linux. Richard is now looking to have full Q40 support added to future releases of the Linux system. (Linux, so named in 1991 for a Finnish university student, Linus Torvalds, who has developed it from its roots in Unix to its present kernel version 2.2.0, runs on all major processors, and has become a formidable competitor to Microsoft Windows and NT.) (and is Free) This, in turn, may have the potential of creating a new market for the Q40 among Linux users that would enlarge its production base among them as well as providing QL users with a full-fledged platform for the powerful Linux OS. This would provide the best of both worlds, as well as further insurance of continued availability and improvement of QL hardware and software! Since the UK does not yet use the Euro, I wrote the following little SuperBasic routine that converts pounds to US dollars. The PRINT_USING command to format the output requires that TK2 be activated, as is automatically done under QPC.
1 REMark QPC ED Listing As Displayed in
WTV Mode
10 CLS
20 PRINT "British pound £ to US $
conversion"
30 INPUT \"Enter current $n.nnnn to £
rate: $";pr
40 INPUT \"Currency in £s to convert:
£";np
50 PRINT \"US dollars: ";:
PRINT_USING"$$###.##",pr*np
60 PRINT \"Any key to repeat - CTRL
SPACE to halt""then RUN to change RATE"
70 PAUSE 1000
80 CLS
90 PRINT "Current $ to £ rate: $";pr
100 GO TO 40