SQLUG

SCOTTISH QL USERS GROUP

MARCH 1999

NUMBER 107

THE SCOTTISH QL USERS GROUP NEWSLETTER

AGM 1.30pm SUNDAY 14th MARCH

The management committee of the hall where we hold our meetings have plans to re-develop it, but the realisation of these plans depends on certain grants being made available. There is a major plan and a minor plan, and the major plan requires funding from ‘lottery’ money which is being applied for. If this is obtained the hall will be out of action for three to four months, but we won’t know for some time whether funding will be given. In any case I am told the minor plan will be implemented. This involves replacing the roof and is likely to make the hall not available for about three to four weeks. When the work is put in hand will depend on answers to the ‘lottery’ application, but I should get information in good time to put it in the newsletter. Our Hall Secretary is very good at communicating with users. We discussed this at our last meeting and decided that if it is the minor plan then we would forgo a meeting for the month affected, but if it looks like being longer then we would seek alternative accommodation. Casual attenders at our meetings should look at the NEXT MEETING slot for news of the up to date position.

LAST MEETING AT PORT OF MENTEITH VILLAGE HALL SUNDAY 14TH FEBRUARY

I am pleased to may that our invalids returned to the fray for this meeting and we had our usual modest turn out. George has looked at sengelr_bas and produced a new version which he says is easier to manipulate, and now it is possible to choose a level of difficulty although I found it no easier to solve. The new version is sengelrl1_bas.
Further to my previous notes on the cuckoo clock, George has provided me with a program which tells you how to get sound for your clock called ‘CLOCK_TEXT and another MOVE_CLOCK_BIN which lets you move it about and change its size if you have Pointer loaded. As he says you get a squawk. I'm sure we could get a more cuckoo-like sound even ‘with the limited beep facilty of the OL.

The following article by George Gwilt is unfortunately too long to get completely in one newsletter, and I have split it in the most convenient place. Hovever it is doubly unfortunate that the second part is something you that, we been waiting for for a long time. In it George is actually ASKING FOR HELP. So there's a chance for all you C prograamers, but not until next month.

GWILT AT C GEORGE GWILT

I really had to find out how GWASS contributed to C68. After all, my assembler was hugely amended for the purpose. Well, I can now report that, far from being an expert able to dispense penetrating remarks, I am floundering, hardly able to keep afloat in C. So, this time I give you a submarine beginner’s eye view.

First I relate just how I get C68 going at all. Then I’ll mention one particularly frustrating area. Finally I’ll explain how these efforts caused me to amend GWASS yet again.

1. Operating C68
Since C requires the correct assemblage of braces, parentheses, commas, asterisks, semicolons and colons before compilation can occur and because it is so easy to make a mistake I evolved my own way of speedily operating as follows.

Step a)

Step b)

Write my program using Perfection with word wrap OFF to get CHRS(1O) in place of CHRS(206) at the end of a line.

Step c)

Copy the program from Perfection to raml _testc by:-

Step d)

Go to BASIC (via a Hot_Key) and do

After the 1st time I do this by ALT/ENTER ENTER.

You now have either a short wait, indicating deep trouble, or a long wait, indicating possibly even deeper trouble but, with luck, a successful compilation.

Step e)

With trembling fingers I now load ‘raml _e1’ into another copy of Perfection. ALT/SHIFT/P is the Hot Key I use to cycle round all loaded Perfections. At the right one I simply press CTRL/L ENTER (for the first time I set raml _el as the prompt).

Step f)

The first umpteen times there are lots of errors signalled. You might get "unexpected )" for example. This indicates that somewhere earlier than this something unsignalled has gone wrong, which makes it a wee bit tricky to correct the fault. I myself dread "l_value expected” because I haven’t the ghost of an idea what is wrong. Usually I add an asterisk and try again, without knowing what I am doing. After all if a monkey, given time, can write the works of Shakespeare. surely I can write a simple C program which will work. Anyway, with a changed program I go back to Step c.

Step g)

If, against all the odds, a program is compiled. I am still not out of the wood (I mean ‘head above water’). If you omit a ‘function’ the linker will not shout

It will whisper a missable ‘3 unidentified labels’. If you do miss this and run the program you have crashed the machine. Go back to Step a.

I run the program from a daughter SBASIC by

Apart from the first time I can use ALT/ENTER ENTER.

All this takes far longer to describe than do (except for the finding of mysterious errors).

Continued next month.

NEXT MEETING
PORT OF MENTEITH VILLAGE HALL, -
SUNDAY 14th MARCH, 11am - 5pm

Our next meeting on the second Sunday of March is again as late in the month as it can be. Auong other things we will have our ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING starting at 1.3Opm.

AGENDA

1. CONFIRMATION OR REPLACEMENT OF FUNCTION HOLDERS
2. FINANCIAL POSITION
3. SUBSCRIPTION
4. ANY OTHER BUSINESS