The Sinclair QL Forum

Posted: **Sun Mar 29, 2020 11:28 am**

NormanDunbar wrote:Thanks Dilwyn, you've saved me lots of time. I was creating a zx-81 font from the actual font data in the zx-81 ROM which I found on-line.

Stay safe.

Cheers,
Norm.

It would do no harm to compare this against the ROM fonts in case I made some mistakes.

I did the font manually in my FontEd program, from diagrams online. But the diagrams weren't good enough quality to verify that I got each character in the right place in the 8x8 grid. Apart from the block characters (which are 8x8) and wide letters with odd numbers of horizontal pixels such as Y and T, most other characters are on a 6x8 grid with other pixels being spacers. I couldn't work out from the diagrams if the 6x8 glyphs are on the left of the 8x8 grid, or central.

If anyone has similar ZX80 and ZX Spectrum fonts for a QL, I'd be glad to add them to the collection.

Posted: **Sun Mar 29, 2020 11:53 am**

In the DP collection theres a fount called ZX_1. I dont know if thats any good.

Posted: **Sun Mar 29, 2020 3:34 pm**

Hi Per,

there are no files with "ZX" in their names in my DP Collection I'm afraid.

These are mine:

Code: Select all

DP_QL1
0/1440 sectors.

BIBLE1_zip                             150133 04/01/95 18:45:52 v1    
BIBLE2_zip                             156049 04/01/95 18:46:02 v1    
BIBLE3_zip                             160554 04/01/95 18:46:11 v1    
BIBLE4_zip                              24077 04/01/95 18:46:13 v1    
BOOT                                      294 04/01/95 18:46:13 v1    
BOOT2                                   13442 04/01/95 18:46:15 v1    
HPDRIVER_zip                             1299 04/01/95 18:46:15 v1    
MAILMANUAL_zip                           6589 04/01/95 18:46:16 v1    
PUBTOOLBOX2MANUAL_zip                    3367 04/01/95 18:46:16 v1    
SUCCESS_zip                             66191 04/01/95 18:46:21 v1    
SUCCESSMANUAL_zip                       17715 04/01/95 18:46:22 v1    
UNZIP                               E   62196 04/01/95 18:46:26 v1    37110
XREFMANUAL_zip                           7532 04/01/95 18:46:27 v1    
XTRAS                                    6872 04/01/95 18:46:28 v1    
XTRAS2                                   2012 04/01/95 18:46:28 v1    
XTRAS3                                   1268 04/01/95 18:46:29 v0    
ZZIP_zip                                41965 04/01/95 18:46:32 v1    


DP_QL2
0/1440 sectors.

ACT_zip                                328448 01/12/94 00:13:36 v1    
PERFPLUSSE_zip                         398340 01/12/94 00:13:37 v1    
QFLICKMANUAL_zip                         5287 01/12/94 00:13:37 v1    


DP_QL3
0/1440 sectors.

ARCHDEVMANUAL_zip                        3182 01/12/94 00:31:33 v1    
CPORT_zip                              285684 01/12/94 00:31:34 v1    
PERFPLUSSEMANUAL_zip                   148202 01/12/94 00:31:34 v1    
QM1_zip                                292401 01/12/94 00:31:34 v1    


DP_QL4
0/1440 sectors.

DBANAL_zip                               1740 01/12/94 00:07:55 v1    
PP_zip                                 228466 01/12/94 00:07:55 v1    
PUBTOOLBOX1_zip                        141448 01/12/94 00:07:55 v1    
PUBTOOLBOX2_zip                        184137 01/12/94 00:07:55 v1    
PUBTOOLBOX3CUT_zip                     174580 01/12/94 00:07:56 v1    


DP_QL5
0/1440 sectors.

CT_zip                                 124320 01/12/94 00:26:24 v1    
QM2_zip                                118331 01/12/94 00:26:24 v1    
QM2ABA_zip                             130035 01/12/94 00:26:24 v1    
TURBO_zip                              111650 01/12/94 00:26:24 v1    
TURBOMANUAL_zip                        129611 01/12/94 00:26:25 v1    
TURBO2MANUAL_zip                       116197 01/12/94 00:26:25 v1    


DP_QL6
0/1440 sectors.

3DP_zip                                 99382 01/12/94 01:05:35 v1    
ACTMANUAL_zip                           99867 01/12/94 01:05:35 v1    
GAMES_zip                               96107 01/12/94 01:05:35 v1    
LNGSE_zip                              106983 01/12/94 01:05:35 v1    
PAMANUAL_zip                            96177 01/12/94 01:05:35 v1    
PPMANUAL_zip                            94363 01/12/94 01:05:36 v1    
PUBTOOLBOX1MANUAL_zip                    2391 01/12/94 01:05:36 v1    
QM2MANUAL_zip                           23814 01/12/94 01:05:36 v1    
SPEDMANUAL_zip                         107915 01/12/94 01:05:36 v1    


DP_QL7
0/1440 sectors.

ARCHDEV_zip                             68829 01/12/94 00:29:56 v1    
COMP_zip                                10898 01/12/94 00:29:56 v1    
CONQMANUAL_zip                          77156 01/12/94 00:29:56 v1    
GRAFIX_zip                              81325 01/12/94 00:29:56 v1    
MB_zip                                  66565 01/12/94 00:29:56 v1    
MMSE_zip                                66580 01/12/94 00:29:56 v1    
NAMES_zip                               61346 01/12/94 00:29:56 v1    
QLQL_zip                                82078 01/12/94 00:29:56 v1    
QM1MANUAL_zip                           63541 01/12/94 00:29:57 v1    
SPC_zip                                 65449 01/12/94 00:29:57 v1    
SPED_zip                                82015 01/12/94 00:29:57 v1    


DP_QL8
0/1440 sectors.

ARCHTUT_zip                             47635 01/12/94 00:32:54 v1    
CONQSE_zip                              54455 01/12/94 00:32:55 v1    
CONQ_zip                                45886 01/12/94 00:32:55 v1    
DATAPP_zip                              55560 01/12/94 00:32:55 v1    
DTQD_zip                                57742 01/12/94 00:32:55 v1    
HB_zip                                  47754 01/12/94 00:32:55 v1    
LNGSEMANUAL_zip                         52133 01/12/94 00:32:55 v1    
MBMANUAL_zip                            52681 01/12/94 00:32:55 v1    
MMSEMANUAL_zip                          58082 01/12/94 00:32:55 v1    
PAYROLL_zip                             39333 01/12/94 00:32:55 v1    
PEDITMANUAL_zip                           673 01/12/94 00:32:55 v1    
PPT_zip                                 56681 01/12/94 00:32:55 v1    
QFLICK_zip                              52741 01/12/94 00:32:55 v1    
SPCMANUAL_zip                           48876 01/12/94 00:32:55 v1    
UP_zip                                  53558 01/12/94 00:32:56 v1    


DP_QL9
0/1440 sectors.

3DPMANUAL_zip                           30802 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
ARCHTUTMANUAL_zip                        3021 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
BB_zip                                  18216 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
COMPMANUAL_zip                           2985 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
CONQSEMANUAL_zip                        11430 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
COPYMANUAL_zip                           3322 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
COPY_zip                                10887 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
CPORTMANUAL_zip                         14590 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
CTMANUAL_zip                            44445 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
DATAPPMANUAL_zip                        10232 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
DBANALMANUAL_zip                         6814 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
DTQDMANUAL_zip                           6196 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
EYEQMANUAL_zip                           8793 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
EYEQ_zip                                42232 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
FEMANUAL_zip                             8777 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
FE_zip                                  20601 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
HBMANUAL_zip                            23173 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
HEX_zip                                  9333 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
MAIL_zip                                 9376 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
NAMESMANUAL_zip                          8881 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
PAYROLLMANUAL_zip                       21362 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
PEDIT_zip                               11139 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
PPTMANUAL_zip                           21339 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
PUBTOOLBOX3_zip                         29214 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
QKICKMANUAL_zip                          8187 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
QKICK_zip                               19880 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
QLQLMANUAL_zip                          12922 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
QMON2MANUAL_zip                         20430 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
RECOVERMANUAL_zip                        9802 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
RECOVER_zip                             12583 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
SBMONMANUAL_zip                          4331 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
SBMON_zip                                6958 01/12/94 00:37:41 v1    
SEDITSPMANUAL_zip                       11719 01/12/94 00:37:42 v1    
SEDITSP_zip                             22583 01/12/94 00:37:42 v1    
SF_zip                                  22597 01/12/94 00:37:42 v1    
SPIDISMANUAL_zip                        10345 01/12/94 00:37:42 v1    
SPIDIS_zip                              32979 01/12/94 00:37:42 v1    
SSGMANUAL_zip                            7816 01/12/94 00:37:42 v1    
SSG_zip                                 30355 01/12/94 00:37:42 v1    
TFRSEMANUAL_zip                          8537 01/12/94 00:37:42 v1    
TFRSE_zip                               15939 01/12/94 00:37:42 v1    
TK3MANUAL_zip                           15529 01/12/94 00:37:42 v1    
TK3_zip                                 19525 01/12/94 00:37:42 v1    
UPMANUAL_zip                            11701 01/12/94 00:37:42 v1    
XREF_zip                                14774 01/12/94 00:37:42 v1    


DP_QL10
0/1440 sectors.

DICS_zip                               507077 01/12/94 01:52:24 v1    
PA_zip                                 197231 01/12/94 01:52:24 v1    
QMON2_zip                               27176 01/12/94 01:52:24 v1

Cheers,
Norm.

Posted: **Sun Mar 29, 2020 4:55 pm**

The font was in a larger collection of fonts included with later versions of Lightning. I've found the font for Spectrum, I'll post it on my site later today.

Posted: **Sun Mar 29, 2020 6:23 pm**

As I said, I dont know if its any good. But here it is.

zxfnt.zip: ZX_1_fnt; (562 Bytes) Downloaded 214 times

Posted: **Sun Mar 29, 2020 8:03 pm**

So I was reading the old ZX81 manual last night (bringing back fond memories since that is how I learned BASIC). I either missed it or forgot about it but it allows variable names with spaces in it:

Code: Select all

let a b c = 10
print a b c
print abc

Hmmm...don't really like that. Easy (but annoying) to implement as you basically just skip spaces and store the variable as a traditional one. Still, weird implementation.

Oh, and as for the special character set of the zxtools variety...grrr that they added \" which creates a pain of a case in my code. I'd rather they used a 3rd special character instead since the way I tried to be efficient in code is to always look for 2 characters following a \ and only one following a % when using cursor keys. I may change it to \"" internally (and the ZX81 shows it as "" on the keyboard) and convert it to-and-from when reading and writing files since that may add the least code.

This is a function to figure out how many ZX81 characters I have as an example (using my 90's coding style):

Code: Select all

   len = 0;
   for (i=0; lstr[i]!='\0'; i++)
      { switch(lstr[i]) { case '\\': i++; case '%': i++; default: len++; } }

BTW, here is another beauty. If my students ever saw this they'd frown since I spend a good amount of time teaching good programming techniques. But I'm trying to save bytes to not have the executable grow too fast. Here I'm avoiding additional assignments since a goto is cheaper. I will revisit this to see if I can do it more properly. Maybe use a strcp function instead but that may add a speed tradeoff which is ok in non-critical code. This code tries to figure out how many spaces to add before line numbers so they all align when LISTing the code:

Code: Select all

      if (j == 0)  /* start of a new line of BASIC */
      {
         if (fstr[i+1] == ' ')
            { lstr[j++] = ' '; goto in2; }  /* reduce code to indent 3 */
         else if (fstr[i+2] == ' ')
            { in2: lstr[j++] = ' '; goto in3; } /* reduce code to indent 2  */
         else if (fstr[i+3] == ' ')
            { in3: lstr[j++] = ' '; }
      }

As I told Norm, there are things in the code I like but there are many things I don't. I was much younger when I wrote this and one of the principles I'm applying is one that I've taught my students which is, when working in a foreign code-base (and after almost 30 years this sure feels foreign) try and abide by existing conventions instead of creating a mess and doing your own thing. So today I don't do some of the formatting I did in the 90's, etc, but am sticking with it. Plus, 3 space indents...ugh...I keep it as 4 now mostly.

Posted: **Sun Mar 29, 2020 8:20 pm**

BTW, one thing I may take out is the variable memory allocation for reading in BASIC. It tries to increment memory usage by some BLKLEN (64 bytes presently which is small) to keep the internal storage as low as possible. But that also means it requires twice that free memory since it takes the old current and creates a new current with BLKLEN added to it and does a copy. Since the ZX81 should max out to at least 16KB I can predefine this size to something that works. It may not be 16KB depending on how large the final ZXSimulator code grows.

Also, it will actually need to be larger than 16KB to house a 16KB program since the ZX81 tokenized everything on entry and the ZXSimulator keeps it as plain old text (so keywords take up more memory in mine). In the end, I may need to figure out how much free memory is available when starting up and choose a memory model based on that since it would be nice if the ZXSimulator ran reasonable on an unexpanded QL but also ran on an expanded QL with more memory. So I'll need to figure that out as I go. Maybe a trap call to show free memory?

Posted: **Mon Mar 30, 2020 12:01 am**

A program I wrote in ZXSimulator. I must say, it wasn't as easy as I hoped. I have to fix the auto-listing that it does to better match the ZX81 as right now it lists the entire program, with multiple screens flashing by, and its useless. Ideally it should list either the line inserted to the lines that follow, or maybe center them on screen.

Code: Select all

5 REM BOUNCING BALL
10 PRINT "ENTER SPEED (1-10)";
15 INPUT SPEED
20 CLS
25 FOR I=0 TO 20
30 LET Y=I
35 LET X=I
40 GOSUB 1000
45 PRINT AT Y,X;" "
50 NEXT I
55 FOR I=21 TO 31
60 LET Y=42-I
65 LET X=I
70 GOSUB 1000
75 PRINT AT Y,X;" "
80 NEXT I
85 FOR I=30 TO 19 STEP -1
90 LET Y=I-19
95 LET X=I
100 GOSUB 1000
105 PRINT AT Y,X;" "
110 NEXT I
115 FOR I=19 TO 0 STEP -1
120 LET Y=19-I
125 LET X=I
130 GOSUB 1000
135 PRINT AT Y,X;" "
140 NEXT I
145 FOR I=20 TO 21
150 LET Y=I
155 LET X=I-19
160 GOSUB 1000
165 PRINT AT Y,X;" "
170 NEXT I
175 FOR I=20 TO 0 STEP -1
180 LET Y=I
185 LET X=23-I
190 GOSUB 1000
195 PRINT AT Y,X;" "
200 NEXT I
205 FOR I=1 TO 8
210 LET Y=I
215 LET X=23+I
220 GOSUB 1000
225 PRINT AT Y,X;" "
230 NEXT I
235 FOR I=8 TO 21
240 LET Y=I
245 LET X=38-I
250 GOSUB 1000
255 PRINT AT Y,X;" "
260 NEXT I
265 FOR I=20 TO 4 STEP -1
270 LET Y=I
275 LET X=I-4
280 GOSUB 1000
285 PRINT AT Y,X;" "
290 NEXT I
295 FOR I=4 TO 1 STEP -1
300 LET Y=I
305 LET X=0
310 GOSUB 1000
315 PRINT AT Y,X;" "
320 NEXT I
325 GOTO 25
500 STOP
1000 REM SPINNIG BALL
1005 FOR J=1 TO SPEED
1010 PRINT AT Y,X;"\. "
1015 PRINT AT Y,X;"\: "
1020 PRINT AT Y,X;"\''"
1025 PRINT AT Y,X;"\ :"
1030 PRINT AT Y,X;"\.."
1035 PRINT AT Y,X;"\: "
1040 PRINT AT Y,X;"\''"
1045 PRINT AT Y,X;"\ :"
1050 PRINT AT Y,X;"\.."
1055 NEXT J
1060 RETURN

Next is to convert it into a .p file and see if I can read it into EightyOne and check that it works the same way...it should as far as I can see.

"Next" was actually pretty easy using zxtext2p.exe and it worked on the EightOne emulator! Simply type:

Code: Select all

zxtext2p.exe BALL_BAS

...and out comes: out.p

The zip file below if for a Windows system, not a QL system:

sample.zip: (1.25 KiB) Downloaded 159 times

Posted: **Tue Mar 31, 2020 9:34 am**

Latest version:

zx.zip: (21.75 KiB) Downloaded 162 times

It's actually about 2% slower but unavoidable as I was trying to get the screen to behave like a ZX81. So I need to check when I print to see if I'm at the end of the screen and if so return an error. Before I was just clearing the screen which was faster when staying within the bounds, since print just assumed things were fine and didn't have to ask if they were. This can chew up time if you are in a loop with lots of prints and for each character this is checked so in the Banner demo I lost 2 seconds on two full screens (plain and inverted) -- up to 1:44

Other changes:

LIST now works more like ZX81 though still a bit unique to how editing is done with ZXSimulator. Now stops when screen is full.
EDIT works like in QL, by giving a line number and screen refreshes and highlights new entry with inverted '>'
adding new lines works same way, by just adding new line (this had been working but now the screen shows new line with '>' in center of screen)
just hitting return on command line LISTs top of program (like in ZX81)
added "" which is saved in standard zxtext2p/zxtools format though you enter on command line by typing \"" (i.e. two double-quotes)
also now creates lowercase filenames since all uppercase was annoying
changed stopping key combo to Ctl-S since Space, Ctl-Space, and Ctl-C interfered with normal QL operation since QL uses those for OS operation

Included are the "banner.bas" and "ball.bas" programs to show off its ZX81 graphics.

Posted: **Sat Apr 04, 2020 1:27 am**

New version:

zx.zip: (22 KiB) Downloaded 157 times

This now implements PLOT, UNPLOT, and SCROLL. Note that PLOT/UNPLOT has one issue shown in the picture below:

This will not be easy to fix. On a ZX81 a plot will clear out all 4 plot areas but a second plot does not clear out the first plot. You see on mine that when I do plot over the "V" letter it keeps parts of it there. If I clear out the entire character square I would also clear out any other plot squares which is wrong. No idea how to fix it without having to keep around lots of info I don't want like where each character is printed on the screen.

This is the code:

Code: Select all

5 PRINT "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ012345"
10 FOR I=0 TO 50
20 PLOT I,I
30 NEXT I

Interestingly, when I change it to this:

Code: Select all

5 PRINT "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTU\'.WXYZ012345"
10 FOR I=0 TO 50
20 PLOT I,I
30 NEXT I

It does not wipe that character away, so it knows the difference between graphics characters and text. So maybe I can find a way to peek a screen location to see if any part of it has something in it but it's not in some block pattern.

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