| QL News |
THE QLKIT, the toolkit from Sinclair Research, has at last been announced.
For £29.95 the QL owner gets a package of nearly 60 routines which have been written by QDOS author Tony Tebby. They include a full screen editor, which is a welcome replacement for the inflexible line editor which resides in the machine, alternative character fonts and extended EXEC commands which allow programs and jobs from QDOS to be chained.
QLKit also provides easier access to the operating system. Pipes, such as those to be found in the Unix operating system, can be used to provide communication between programs, job control is made simple and routines have been included for memory management.
Other releases from the company include the standard specification for QL floppy disc interfaces and a QDOS programming manual.
The manual includes information necessary for programmers to get to grips with Tony Tebby's operating system. It costs £14.95 and will be available from Camberley.
"PROGRAMS of originality and quality for all the family," are promised by Virgin Games in its new book of listings by Peter Shaw.
Games for Your Sinclair QL, edited by Tim Hartnell, provides 20 games which you can type into the QL and retails at £2.95. Programs include Nimrod, Clock, Worms and Buzzphrase generator.
Hartnell has also launched his own book of listings and explanations. Tim Hartnell's QL Handbook retails at £7.95 and includes routines to produce a version of the programming language Logo, a section on creating adventures and programs to allow you to define your own character sets.
THE Metacomco Assembler Development Package has been enhanced and its price dropped.
A linker has been added to enable assembler modules and user code to be chained together. Existing users will be able to obtain the upgrade for a sum which is as yet unspecified. The company says, however, that any charge will be nominal.
Metacomco hopes to draw a new type of customer with the price cut from £59.95 to £39.95. The company says that the new price will make the product more accessible to the growing number of home users of the QL.
THE STOP storage optimiser, from Digitex, will compress your microdrive files to as little as half their original size.
Digitex says that STOP, which is supplied on microdrive, will work on text files and data of any size; it makes the process of backing-up files easier and will work with any QL compatible software.
The optimiser uses a simple process. It reads the microdrive file, calculates the best practical way of condensing it and then produces another file which is about half the size of the original.
STOP is recommended for use on large text files, Basic programs, word processor documents and data files. Digitex warns that it is not intended for use on code files, such as machine code.
The program can be obtained for £17.95 from Digitex Computers.
A FLOPPY disc interface to supplement the Sinclair microdrives has been launched by Computamate.
The Q-Disk interface is available from WH Smith for £149.00. It is easy to plug in, says the manufacturer, and uses the RAM expansion slot at the left-hand side of the machine.
The operating system software which drives the product was written by QDOS author Tony Tebby. It uses the official Sinclair floppy disc format and is compatible with all software written for the QL. The company says that several companies have shown interest in putting new software on disc using the system.
As well as manufacturing the interface Computamate provides disc drives for the QL. A dual 5¼in. unit with a capacity of 400K is available for £459.00. The 3¼in. single drive costs £299.00. Both will accept double-density floppies.
QL INTEGRATED Accounts, from Sagesoft, forms the centrepiece of a range of five new releases from Sinclair Research.
The package will retail at £89.95, a quarter of the amount charged for the program on other systems.
The other packages include Cash Trader, Decision Maker, Program Planner and Touch and Go.
Cash Trader, at £69.95, is the second major string in the Sinclair bow. Together with the accounts package it will provide a powerful money management system for the small business man or for large companies with low staffing levels and many interests.
Decision Maker and Touch and Go were written by Triptych. The latter provides an easy introduction to the QL keyboard and aims to make you as familiar with it as possible. Decision Maker provides answers to questions which you do not want to ask yourself.