The Sinclair QL Forum

tofro wrote: Sat Sep 20, 2025 7:45 am Digging a bit in memory and old paperwork:
Its first incarnation came with QRAM, and that should have been 1987 or 1988 - So, not quite 40 years old. But to establish itself from a GUI toolkit that drove QJump programs to the publicly accepted WIMP for the QL took another, like 3-5 years. I can't just now find the first release date of the QPTR toolkit that provided the API to third-party developers.

TK2 is a different story - that entered the market as early as 1985, one year after the launch.

Thank you for the clarification. This aligns a bit more with where I thought it was timewise.

Derek_Stewart wrote: Sat Sep 20, 2025 7:28 am If I want to use a GUI system on the QL, there is only one option - The Pointer System and QPAC2, QD, QMENU, QBASIC...

It has sort of that early X-Windows feel...right in line with that UNIX feel of QDOS (for me at least).

Derek_Stewart wrote: Sat Sep 20, 2025 7:28 am ...which makes the QL a nice GUI based system in less than 512K or ram, no other system can do this.

Not to start a back and forth thread here on GUI comparisons, but the early Amiga did pretty well in that small amount of memory with it's GUI.

Personally, if the QL had stuck around past 1986 it would have been interesting to see how ICE could have grown as well. With only 16K in size, that is pretty efficient for any GUI. Grant it, it's just an app launcher in that form. I still haven't tried its toolkit to see what sort of help it gives in writing your own apps, though Choice also worked pretty well as a task manager.

Derek_Stewart wrote: Sat Sep 20, 2025 7:28 am The best non GUI editor in my opinion is QED, and maybe TheEDitorSE a close second. GUI Editors, QD, I can not think of any other

QED is my favorite one for the QL as well.

ql_freak wrote: Fri Sep 19, 2025 7:00 pm

Dave wrote: Fri Sep 19, 2025 4:47 pmMy actual question: Is there a list of S*BASIC tokens anywhere?

All S(uper)BASIC tokens are listed in Jan Jones book "QL SuperBASIC The Definitive Handbook" in Appendix C - THE SuperBASIC TOKENS.

Not quite. The ones for hex and binary tokens aren't. But they are described in the listing above.

Norman, assuming I posted the correct listing for what you referred to, would it be OK if I put it on my website? (Sorry for straying slightly off topic for this thread)

tofro wrote: Sat Sep 20, 2025 1:35 pm
tkb.oper $85 All sorts of operators:
tkw.plus $8501 +
tkw.minus $8502 -
tkw.mulf $8503 *
tkw.divf $8504 /
tkw.ge $8505 >=
tkw.gt $8506 >
tkw.apeq $8507 ==
tkw.eq $8508 =
tkw.ne $8509 <>
tkw.le $850A <=
tkw.lt $850B <
tkw.bor $850C
tkw.band $850D &&
tkw.bxor $850E ^^
tkw.power $850F ^
tkw.cnct $8510 &
tkw.or $8511 OR
tkw.and $8512 AND
tkw.xor $8513 XOR
tkw.mod $8514 MOD
tkw.div $8515 DIV
tkw.instr $8516 INSTR

Looks like $850C should be '||' (binary OR). Looks like it's missing in the manual version I have here, not just tofro's list.

dilwyn wrote: Sat Sep 20, 2025 9:55 pm Norman, assuming I posted the correct listing for what you referred to, would it be OK if I put it on my website? (Sorry for straying slightly off topic for this thread)

Morning Dilwyn,

Of course you can! Anything I do for the QL is available for everyone. Help yourselves. I thought it already was,but when I searched I didn't find it. Mind you, it probably would have helped if I could remember the name of it!

Cheers,
Norm.

NormanDunbar wrote: Sun Sep 21, 2025 7:44 am

dilwyn wrote: Sat Sep 20, 2025 9:55 pm Norman, assuming I posted the correct listing for what you referred to, would it be OK if I put it on my website? (Sorry for straying slightly off topic for this thread)

Morning Dilwyn,

Of course you can! Anything I do for the QL is available for everyone. Help yourselves. I thought it already was,but when I searched I didn't find it. Mind you, it probably would have helped if I could remember the name of it!

Cheers,
Norm.

Thank you Norman.
Download the DECODE SAV utility, including instructions and the DJToolkit_bin file needed, from the Programming Section page https://dilwyn.theqlforum.com/program/index.html on my site.

I havent tested extensively but DECODE_SAV seems not to work with integer
tokens produced by Qloadref V1.9 and possibly other, not ancient, versions
of QSAVE. V1.9 is the current version of QLOAD/QSAVE that came with
Q_Liberator V3.36 and beyond. The SMSQ/E version works fine.

It so happens that I spent some time yesterday tidying and updating my own
similar utility, LIST, when I discovered this for myself. After an hour's
hacking this afternoon I cracked it. The tokenisation of integers doesnt
appear to be documented anywhere..

Anyway, I dont want to flood this forum with my excretions, so if you want
a copy it is available at Knoware.no, together with a few other odds and
ends.

Note that these utilities are pretty useless. All they do is convert
tokenised S*BASIC programs (SAV files) into their human-readable form -
something the S*BASIC interpreters manage perfectly well on their own!

In the accompanying document I show how such a program can be made to do
some really useful stuff. My program retains the structure and vocabulary
of the token system so it is relatively easy to modify it for different
uses where accurate parsing of S*BASIC source code is wanted.

As usual, please let me know if you find any errors etc.

Thanks Per, I'll start a new topic doe Decode_sav and the like.

Cheers,
Norm.