QZX is the oldest Sinclair newsletter established in the United States (or anywhere else for that matter). It is a specialized newsletter designed for those interested in using their Sinclair Computers in radio communications. It has been published for well over 10 years and the types of articles and the computers about which they were written illustrate the development of the Sinclair computers. Now a complete index is available.
The index itself is a 59 page book with heavy red covers and plastic comb binding so that the pages easily lie flat. The main part consists of four separate indices, a Subject Index, an Author Index, a Computer Index, and a Title Index, The last eight pages contain articles describing the index organization, issue corrections, Sinclair computers in general, some author addresses, back issue availability, and QZX history.
The organization of the index was more complicated than anticipated. Part of the difficulty was that two new programs, the database program and a desktop publishing program had to be learned. The database holds the basic information on each article and prints it out in four different formats to create the four indices. The database program also combines the article authors with the appropriate address from the QZX subscriber database to create the author address printout.
It took a bit of experimentation with type size to get an index which was readable yet did not take too many pages to print. It was not until just before the final print out that it was discovered how to remove excess space between each line in the index. Page numbers were made to come out correctly by making use of an undocumented feature of the page numbering system.
Most people know the general subject of the article for which they are looking, hence the first index is the subject index. Each article was assigned to one of 16 subjects. Some articles deal with more than one subject, but it would have required considerably more programing to have listed some articles under more than one subject (to say nothing of increasing the length of the index). In a few cases a secondary subject follows the main subject in the listing. Fortunately most articles dealt with only one subject and the title is informative enough to convey some subject information too. The 16 subjects are listed later in this article.
Everybody has a favorite author or at least knows what many authors prefer to write about, so the second index is an Author Index. Occasionally articles were taken from other magazines. If an author was not given, the name of the magazine is used as the author. If the information in the article is just a compilation of widely known information sometimes no author is listed.
If you are interested in a particular Sinclair computer the third index will be most useful. There the articles are listed under the specific computer most closely associated with the article. Occasionally a second computer is listed if the article applies to it too.
There are some subtle differences between the computer labeled All and Other. ‘All’ means that the article is general enough to apply to no specific computer. ‘Other’ means that the content refers directly to a non-Sinclair computer.
The last index is based on the title of the article. It is the most complete listing as there is a column which tells the reader whether or not the article contains a schematic. The other columns are the same as the previous indices but are a little narrower (hence contain less information) to allow space for the schematic column.
Selecting the subjects to index was the most difficult decision to make when designing the index, and assigning one of these to each article was the most time consuming task when building the data base upon which this index is built.
Not all articles were suitable for indexing. There is no need to index the Editor’s Notes because they appear in each issue. Furthermore, they and a number of other articles, contain information which becomes dated rapidly, so that there is little utility in looking them up; hence they are not included.
Most of the other articles are divided up into 16 different subject areas. The following table lists all these subjects and shows the number of articles assigned to each area as of the April 1993 issue. Figure 1 shows the assignments in a graphical form.
Subject Table
Subject Article # Antennas 23 Control 6 Corrections 14 CW 14 Hardware 121 Logging 14 Other 27 Packet 32 Program 107 Programing 25 QSL 8 Review Books 22 Review Hardware 34 Review Program 34 RTTY 24 Satellite 14
There are really quite a few computers which can be classified as Sinclair computers. A short article with more details of their differences appears in the index. But it is easy to classify all of them into one of six groups listed in the following table. The table also shows the number of articles in each group and is followed by Fig. 2, which displays the same information in graphical form.
Computer Table
Computer Article # All 67 Other 5 QL 47 TS2068 85 Z88 4 ZX81 311
The ZX81 group is the biggest. It also contains articles written for the very closely related TS1000 and TS1500. Also appearing in this group are articles discussing the predecessor ZX80 and Microace. The TS2068 group includes those very few articles which deal with the Spectrum series of computers. The Spectrum computers come in a number of models and were quite popular (especially as a game machine) in Europe, but were rarely sold here. Hence almost no QZX articles involve only these computers. The QL is a very capable computer. The Z88 is a really small lap top but is not used much by the amateur community. The Other category includes MSDOS computers and such unusual models as the PC8300, a Chinese distant relative of the ZX81 that will run some of the same programs. Some articles cover topics like programing hints applicable to all of the Sinclair computes and are not indexed under any specific one.
The index is being sold for $9.00 postpaid by QZX, 2025 O’Donnell Drive, Las Cruces, NM 88001. Subscriptions to the newsletter are available from the same address for $15 for 12 monthly issues (to addresses in the US, Canada, or Mexico).
