The Sinclair QL Forum

Thanks Tobias, you are a great resource here, y'know! While I was aware of the limitations of relative addressing (its been discussed here too, after all. And then theres those pesky doubly offset vectors..) I guess the main reason for my ignorance is that Ive never (knowingly) encountered it as a p...

Pardon my ignorance, but why is it so hard to make these compilers (FPC, C68,..) produce "pure" Qdos code, ie code that is non-self-modifying and position independent? AFAICS there is nothing inherent in the languages themselves that prevent it. Could it be fixed? Another question borne of...

FPC seems now to have the best QL job name facilities on the planet

Hhrmm, a wee correction. I think this is what you meant, Norm: or

I don't argue on that as well ;) There is quite good reasoning behind long job names in some cases (like QD incorporating the full file name of the file edited in its name, or a linker incorporating its command line,.... ). Such stuff can actually add valuable information to a job display. Im fully...

PS: Last year I sent a request to Wolfgang to expand the name allowance for SBASIC daughter jobs to 48 characters (the value chosen by TT for Things etc) but it seems to have got lost. The current 40 char limit is just a little too little to my mind, while 48 allows for the full 42 char file name an...

I dont argue with that, Tobias, I was just pointing out what I thought was a sensible figure that one could rely on. Its up to the individual programmer if he thinks he can make good use of other values, although he should not be surprised if other parts of the system wont cooperate: If you were to ...

<> I have another question: how long a job name is allowed to be? For now all generated executables have the job name "FPC" hardwired. It would be cool to have this set to something more meaningful compile time. But I need to know what's the longest name allowed. Im sure Marcel will answe...

<> On this point of detecting whether a valid directory-device has already been specified, what is the most robust/elegant way to validate this, given the ever-growing list of possible devices that a user may have installed? I guess QPAC has a way to build it's list of available devices for the 'Fi...

Unarguably intentional. Perhaps it was done to avoid a program halting unnecessarily for an unimportant "error". Job already done. Why make a fuss?