The Sinclair QL Forum

janbredenbeek wrote:

Derek_Stewart wrote: IIRC there was some confusion in that book about the RI stack. (Mine only lasted a few days before it split into numerous pieces, so I dont have it.) Perhaps others can confirm?

I did not say this, PJW I think...

janbredenbeek wrote:I have a copy of both books (Assembly Language Programming and QDOS Companion) and still find them useful as reference material. They are somewhat outdated though as they are based on QDOS 1.03 (JM ROM) and thus miss a lot of developments since early 1985. There are also a number of errors (some of which I have annotated).

Having written thousands of lines of code based on the old nomenclature, I guess I will probably never get accustomed to the SMSQ/E conventions

HI,

I would be grateful of an update on the errors, which I have spotted some.

I have also scanned and OCRed the badly scanned PDF of "Assembly Language Programming", which I am looking at now. Nut do not expect a quick turn-around, as I have some soldering project to do...

janbredenbeek wrote:Having written thousands of lines of code based on the old nomenclature, I guess I will probably never get accustomed to the SMSQ/E conventions

Likewise!

Plus, all my books on the mater are small "normal" sized books - Pennell, Dickens (and Denning, which I no longer have) -- and are easy to flip open (especially the Sunshine ones, they are loose leaf now!). I'm now upgraded to use Wolfgang's QDOS/SMSQ manuals and those are A4 sized and in a huge folder. Which I strangely find less useful than a book format. However, given the number of pages, this is unlikely to be ever produced in book format.

And yes, I did look at printing in booklet format -- that caused no end of grief for the printer (preview) given, the number of pages.


Cheers,
Norm.

XorA wrote:

pjw wrote:<>
A general question: Would it be an idea to swap out all the old nomenclature for the new? Now would be the chance!

My main reasons are:
1. to prevent confusion and prevent the evolution of two separate nomenclatures
2. to create a seamless transition once someone wanted to move on to more advanced topics and/or SMSQ/E
3. to enable folk to more easily read and understand SMSQ/E sources, which, after all, are the only properly documented and annotated sources for a "QL" OS we have
4. to enable folk to more easily read and understand the Qdos/SMSQ Reference Manual, the most accurate and current documentation available.

Just my penny's worth

Possibly Derek could put the source files in github then people can make their own editions with ease!

Even in the Bronze Age they figured that everybody speaking their own
language was a bad idea, as illustrated by the story of the Tower of Babel, viz:

5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people
had started building. 6 And the Lord said, “If as one people all
sharing a common language they have begun to do this, then nothing
they plan to do will be beyond them. 7 Come, let’s go down and confuse
their language so they won’t be able to understand each other."
Genesis 11:5-7

A jealous god wishing to confound us is one thing , but why would we do this to ourselves?!

There looks to be 2 Gods: QDOS and SMSQ/E.

Now SMSQ/E, is that SMS, SMS2, SMSQ...

Minerva is a QDOS rewrite, so it can not be related to SMSQ/E.

SMSQ/E is backward compatible to QDOS, well sort of.

I personally prefer to use SMSQ/E, but I know QDOS.

So use both...

I read the Minerva and SMSQ/E source to learn how to programme 68000 assembley language.

Uncle Norm's excellent Assembley Magazine is great to read, I think I understand the subject better, but not an expert by any means. At least all the information is available not like that in the past, many information was closed to mere mortals, only God like being were granted access, or thats how seemed.

pjw wrote:

XorA wrote:

pjw wrote:<>
A general question: Would it be an idea to swap out all the old nomenclature for the new? Now would be the chance!

My main reasons are:
1. to prevent confusion and prevent the evolution of two separate nomenclatures
2. to create a seamless transition once someone wanted to move on to more advanced topics and/or SMSQ/E
3. to enable folk to more easily read and understand SMSQ/E sources, which, after all, are the only properly documented and annotated sources for a "QL" OS we have
4. to enable folk to more easily read and understand the Qdos/SMSQ Reference Manual, the most accurate and current documentation available.

Just my penny's worth

Possibly Derek could put the source files in github then people can make their own editions with ease!

Even in the Bronze Age they figured that everybody speaking their own
language was a bad idea, as illustrated by the story of the Tower of Babel, viz:

5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people
had started building. 6 And the Lord said, “If as one people all
sharing a common language they have begun to do this, then nothing
they plan to do will be beyond them. 7 Come, let’s go down and confuse
their language so they won’t be able to understand each other."
Genesis 11:5-7

A jealous god wishing to confound us is one thing , but why would we do this to ourselves?!

Just because us British are shite with languages doesn't mean everyone else has to be

But my main gist was Derek should not be required to make all the updates, it should be a community effort! Derek already has an impressive backlog of QL tasks, I have no idea how he fits in personal life!

XorA wrote:Just because us British are shite with languages doesn't mean everyone else has to be

"Shite" is a great Scottish word, isn't it?

What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages?
Trilingual.

What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages?
Bilingual.

What do you call someone who speaks 1 language?
British!



Cheers,
Norm.

My response to "should we update Pennell's book(s) to reference SMSQ rather than QDOS" is, if the source for the books is made available, somewhere, then I think the best plan is to go through the book and replace each QDOS trap/vector/sysvar/etc with the QDOS/SMSQ variants together? Actually it sounds pretty bad when I put it like that, but I mean, something like:

Yada yada yada IO_OPEN yada yada

Woud become:

Yada yada yada IO_OPEN/IOB_OPEN yada yada (Or whatever SMSQ uses for IO_OPEN -- I haven't memeorised them all yet, and I'm not near my manual!)


As a (better?) alternative, correct the errors in the existing book sources, then, take a copy and change the QDOS references to SMSQ references and have two copies of the finished PDF files, one for the QDOS die hards (and me) and one for the newbies and SMSQ die hards (and me!). The problem with this approach would be the amount of updates that have been done to SMSQ since it "split" from QDOS, none of which are covered in the QDOS book.


Feel free to tell me that these are really bad ideas, or not, as the case may be.


Cheers,
Norm.

Derek_Stewart wrote:At least all the information is available not like that in the past, many information was closed to mere mortals, only God like being were granted access, or thats how seemed.

Agreed, I could almost weep at the amount of mental effort I put into deciphering the binary just to understand a point which could have been clarified in minutes given access to the source. No amount of explanation can be as unequivocal as seeing the implementation (eg. device drivers). As tofro posted recently "The truth is (as always) in the code".

Regarding Andy Pennell's book 'QDOS companion' (hint in the title there), I think it should remain historic document. Perhaps slightly polished in places with corrections and clarifications.

NormanDunbar wrote:

XorA wrote:Just because us British are shite with languages doesn't mean everyone else has to be

"Shite" is a great Scottish word, isn't it?

What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages?
Trilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages?
Bilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks 1 language?
British!

Cheers,
Norm.

Err, excuse me....do Gaelic and Welsh not count Norman?