While looking at the archives for the comp.sources.misc newsgroup on Usenet I noticed that there had been a posting on tools for the QL. I was able to download the posting and get the tools.
The programs came from Giuseppe “Beppe” Zanetti of Italy. Giuseppe has written a number of programs, including the ones posted to comp.sources.misc. Below is a list of the programs in the posting:
- BOOT_BFP, INDENTER_BAS, CODER_BAS, TOKEN_BAS, TOBORLAN_BAS, TEST1_PAS, TEST2_PAS. – A SuperBasic to Pascal converter.
- COLORS_ASM – Creates affect of 16 colors by alternating between two screens.
- NEWQL_C – QL screen reader for MS-DOS.
- BUFFIN_ASM, SERBUFFE_ASM – Multitasking serial buffer and buffin() function.
- TEXTPROC_BAS – Split Quill files in columns and justify text.
I have only tried out the Pascal convertor and the text processor. The text processor works as advertised. It takes a Quill document as input and outputs it to the screen or a file, formatted to the column width you specify. It also allows you to control justification and line spacing. The program seems to strip out all Quill formating characters and finds just the pure text in the document. Kind of a neat little program to use and to see how it handles Quill files.
I tried to get the Pascal converter to work. The boot program expects the other programs as compiled tasks. I got around this by calling each program in turn. The Tokeniser works, but the program stopped with an “invalid expression” error about half way through the coder. I’ll be contacting Giuseppe about fixing this and/or giving it try myself. The program does have some promise. One caveot: the output file is designed for TurboPascal and not QL Pascal. With a little effort one can change the TurboPascal program so it will compile under QL Pascal. It would take some work, but the program could be adapted to output directly to QL Pascal.
One stumbling block with the above programs is that all the prompts are in Italian (big surprise 🙂 ). With some guessing and looking at the code, I was able to get around this limitation. You might find a Italian/English dictionary helpfull.
Giuseppe also has a number of other programs that are available directly from him. The programs are for both the QL and MS-DOS. Most programs are public domain (a contribution is up to you) and one is commercial (but cheap).
- IMPRESS DTP Compiled SB $15 Desktop Publishing for 128K QL
- IMPRESS CLIP Shareware
- HTPAINTER Shareware – Simple but efficent painter
- SOCCER MANAGER 2 Shareware
- BIG COPIER Shareware – File copier for single drive system
- TIFFS Shareware – Images scanned with ScanMan Plus
- SCR_OFF Shareware
- CUT2QL (MS-DOS) Shareware Converts CUT files to QL Sbytes.
The programs that come in the QL Tools posting are available from the QHJ.