The Sinclair QL Forum

After tinkering with the QL for around 10 months, I've decided to delve into pointer environments.

As usual there are some excellent resources on Dilwyns Site;
http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/pe/index.html
http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/docs/ptr/peig/pe.html

From reading various guides, I see there are several different Window Managers, some free, some paid.
Is there a definate advantage to one over another? Or is it just personal choice?

Any input would be greatly appreciated!

It depends what you mean by window manager - there is only WMAN (which works alongside PTR_GEN) to form the pointer environment and I would recommend v2.01 (for JM ROM), v2.03 for JS/Minerva etc

If you mean desktops, there are:

QDT (Commercial)
Launchpad (Commercial)
Qascade (public domain)

Others.... ?

I personally use QDT + Qascade, although QDT would probably be too slow on a Gold Card QL or less (plus I think it needs Aurora graphics as a minimum)

Oh dear oh dear oh dear

Been there, bought the T-Shirt, Read the book(s), watched the Video, bought the software, read the books again, put on shelf, saw bright sparkly thing, got distracted, watched the programme, listened to the radio, wrote the blog, lived in the house that Jack built.

Start again, buy the t-shirt...

RWAP wrote:It depends what you mean by window manager - there is only WMAN (which works alongside PTR_GEN) to form the pointer environment and I would recommend v2.01 (for JM ROM), v2.03 for JS/Minerva etc

If you mean desktops, there are:

QDT (Commercial)
Launchpad (Commercial)
Qascade (public domain)

Thanks for clearing that up Rich, I was getting confused between window managers and desktops!

Mr_Navigator wrote: Start again, buy the t-shirt...

Among desktops, you have also : QRAM and QPAC/QPAC2 ?

I use QRAM, because (a long time ago, when I had my SuperQboard upgraded to support a mouse) I got it for free from Sandy. On a basic QL or emulators with 512x256 almost not graphic res. (only 8 or 4 colors, mostly for text), I find it handy for my floppy file mgt. ; I use it also occasionally to kill some jobs that froze. It looks even a little better (but not much) than the mouse driven MSdos softwares (before windows). For a change, I will try to find and test the PD one that Rich signaled... but I do not find them tools essential (unless you have larger screens like for instance with QPC ?)

QPC was my first emulator, on a laptop with a 800x600 color LCD screen, that could be fully managed in this resolution (and higher) ; when this computer broke (whereas today, my QL still works !) and my master QPC floppy failed, I switched to Daniele's Qemulator V2, which full screen mode simply enlarge the 512x256 screen map (convenient for my old eyes) without changing the resolution. I now tend to stay with that : my basic QL (with Sandy's SuperQboard, +512kram, STK2 and double 3"5 floppies drive) on my flat TV, and Qemulator V2 on my laptop.

Bye Paul

Hi guys, I try to use PE on my QL with trump card 2 and qimi interfaces and things seems to go fine but I've some troubles with qtrans program: it starts but after it design screen with menus and buttons it displays this error: My system has two floppy drives and before launch qtrans I have configured it to use in right panel flp1_ and in left panel flp2_ but in another snap you can see that it not accept my configs Can somebody give me a tip to resolve?
Thanks
Paolo

belg4rion67 wrote:Hi guys, I try to use PE on my QL with trump card 2 and qimi interfaces and things seems to go fine but I've some troubles with qtrans program: it starts but after it design screen with menus and buttons it displays this error:

My system has two floppy drives and before launch qtrans I have configured it to use in right panel flp1_ and in left panel flp2_ but in another snap you can see that it not accept my configs

Can somebody give me a tip to resolve?
Thanks
Paolo

This arises because of the use of the FNAME$ function from Toolkit 2 to return directory name.

A Trump Card has no level 2 directories so in theory should return "" and work from root directories of a drive all the time - it looks like it might work differently on different versions of Toolkit 2 perhaps, I'll look into it probably this weekend since I'm working 12 hour days this week as it's so busy at work.

The most recent version of Q-Trans version 1 is v1.04 - please let me know if that's the version you are using.

As soon as I get a chance I'll have a look at the Q-Trans version 1 code to see if there's a quick and simple fix I could make to work around this, assuming it's a bug.

I'm in your situation on work too Dilwyn, so I can confirm version only friday... sorry.
Anyway thank you very much; I'll update this post friday evening.
Cheers

Hi Dilwyn, finally I've rescued version number of my qtrans: it's 1.04 but I've found on a ql repository version 1.03 so tomorrow evening I'll try that version to check if behaviour is the same.
Bye
Paolo

Edit: today I tried version 1.03 with same results...
Can someone suggest to me another front-end under PE?
Thanks in advance
Paolo

RWAP wrote: QDT (Commercial)

QDT is now freeware and is on “QL IS 30 2014 - THE DISTRIBUTION” http://sinclairql.net/repository.html#TheDistribution. In addition to the full installation package there’s a preconfigured *.win for use with QPC2 and SMSQmulator. Download, try out and enjoy! QL forever, Urs