The Sinclair QL Forum

Hi all,

After having read an introduction on the THINGS by Joechem Merz, I wish to explore further.
I know THINGS are built into SMS system.

But how about programming under normal QDOS (not SMS)? I believe it possible, as QPAC2 is programmed as a set of different things, so the THING system must be defined within it, correct?

A couple of questions now arising...
- what is the binary I need to tie my calls to?
- THING calls are documented in SMS reference manual, can these be used?
- what other programmer's documentation best to use?
- are there any source code examples available in Assembly, Super BASIC, etc?

Many thanks
Tom

I've been attempting to understand Thing programming for years, and to find some examples etc that were documented, but with no luck.

Good luck in your quest!


Cheers,
Norm.

Tom,
you need to be loading Hotkey System II in order to have Things on QDOS.

The SMS manual is alright for using as introductory documentation. SMSQ/E and QDOS Things are not like in SMS2 accessed through a trap, but through a vector instead.

There is actually only very few code examples floating around - The best were probably in a number of QL Todays written by Jochen himself and George Gwilt. I do remember one article from Jochen that was pretty much covering it all, but can't remember where it was. Maybe you have the DVD, that would help.
Another article is here: http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/docs/ptr/thingdoc.zip

To my knowledge, there is Thing bindings for (obviously) assembler and C68.

Regards,
Tobias