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Inventory of software developed with PE in mind

Posted: Fri Jul 10, 2020 2:18 am
by lowrybt
Is there a location anywhere listing comprehensively some or all of the software developed for the QL for use with the Pointer Environment and associated accessories/apps?

Re: Inventory of software developed with PE in mind

Posted: Fri Jul 10, 2020 11:46 am
by Chr$
Best place is probably Dilwyn's site which specifies for each piece of software if PE is required:

http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/downloads.html

I don't think there is a comprehensive list of everything.

Re: Inventory of software developed with PE in mind

Posted: Sat Jul 11, 2020 11:31 pm
by RWAP
From my own stable, there is:

Black Knight (by Francois Lanciault)
ProForma ESC/P2 Colour Drivers (by me - needs ProWesS also)
Q-Index (by me)
Q-Help (by me)
Q-Route (by me)
Q-Word (by me, Phoebus Dokos and Geoff Wicks)
QL Genealogist (by Chris Boutal and me)
QShang (Jochen Merz)
The Lonely Joker (Jochen Merz)

Re: Inventory of software developed with PE in mind

Posted: Sun Jul 12, 2020 1:06 pm
by Tinyfpga
I am in the same boat as lowrybt.
I was an SMS2 user a long time ago and when I discovered the Q68 I bought a number of them.
SMS2 was a PE only product and so I was looking to carry on using that type of environment on the Q68. Because SMSQE was a QL compatible version of SMS2
it was fairly easy to re-use my old SMS2 PE software on the Q68. I have spent many hours looking through most/all of the software available on
Dilwyn Jones's website and I have downloaded Black Phoenix 1.5 and QL/E.
Black Phoenix is an impressive PE/QPC2 installation but it is not for me. It is too complex for a Q68 and I don't really want to simulate a Microsoft user
interface. I like the relative simplicity of the original PE interface.

The software situation has changed significantly since the SMS2 days. All of the important PE software and associated instruction manuals are now freely downloadable.
I have been learning to write PE application software in compiled SBASIC. I do this using the my old SMS2 setup and have found that this works very well on both the Q68
and QPC2. I do not own any QL hardware but I see no reason why my PE applications would not run on a PE enhanced QL.

If I find the time I could list all the PE stuff I use on my Q68s, meanwhile I list some of it as follows:-

PE as included in SMSQE, QD, Hyperhelp, Keywords, QPAC2, TK2, QPTR, Qprommer, Solitaire, Qtyp, Thing, Qlib, Diary, Menuconfig
Sernet, Fileinfo2, SMS2parser, Qspread, Unzip(in PE form)

I installed the Prowess software because, sadly, it is not really compatible except for Linedesign which is a full screen application only. (a resizeable version would be better)

If anyone wanted a copy of my Q68 and QPC2 setups I could clean them up and post them on this forum.

Re: Inventory of software developed with PE in mind

Posted: Sun Jul 12, 2020 5:25 pm
by Chr$
Tinyfpga wrote:
If anyone wanted a copy of my Q68 and QPC2 setups I could clean them up and post them on this forum.
A man can't have enough of other people's QXL.WIN type containers to try out!

Re: Inventory of software developed with PE in mind

Posted: Tue Jul 14, 2020 3:01 pm
by lowrybt
Many thanks to all. T

Re: Inventory of software developed with PE in mind

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2020 1:32 am
by ql_freak
If a program is a PE (or nowdays EE [Extended Environment]) program shouldn't matter!

If a program is well written it runs perferctly under the PE/EE. Best examples are the PSION programs, which are even reentrant (can be HOT_CHPed).

The PE/EE is written in a way, that old (NON-PE/EE) programs run perfectly with the PE, at least since Minerva and the PIE extension (i. e. the extension, now even built into QPC2, which allows buried windows to continue output to it).

The biggest disadvantage of NON-PE programs is, that you normally cannot move it's windows to another screen position. But even that is possible, look e.g. at the SEDIT editor, which is NO PE/EE program, but can move its window via Ctrl-F4 (albeit still not documented) keystroke (I think it's not so difficult, to implement this in programs, which are able to update their windows, e.g. editors). For SuperBASIC (MultiBASIC) programs you can always do it via the SuperBASIC command WINDOW (of course most probably loosing the current output).

Some of the best programs are NONE PE/EE programs! The most famous is of course Text87. There is no other word processor with similar capabilities. At its time, not even DOS/Windows word processors come close to it. The only comparable word processors at this time were e.g. Signum on the Atari ST. There is DME, besides MicroEmacs the best editor for the QL. There is C68 AND Lattice C (which is capable of creating reentrant, ROMable code), ...

Anthony DID IT: Allow non GUI programs to run perfectly with GUI programs!

Re: Inventory of software developed with PE in mind

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2020 2:04 pm
by mk79
ql_freak wrote:The PE/EE is written in a way, that old (NON-PE/EE) programs run perfectly with the PE, at least since Minerva and the PIE extension (i. e. the extension, now even built into QPC2, which allows buried windows to continue output to it).
Just for the record, the PE background update code I wrote is original and has no code in common with PIE.

Marcel

Re: Inventory of software developed with PE in mind

Posted: Sun Jul 19, 2020 1:54 am
by ql_freak
That's of course clear. I do not expect, that PIE (PEX, ...) does support the high colour modes of QPC2 ;-)