QPC2 v5.01 and SMSQ/E v3.38 released

After a long delay, partly because it took quite long to put SMSQ/E v3.38 together, a new QPC2 has finally been released. It took so long that my expensive code signing certificate has expired again, so it was actually only used for a single release 🙁 But I bought another one, so this release is again digitally signed to help with security issues.

Despite the long wait QPC itself is mainly a maintenance release. One added feature is native support for QubIDE image files. These can be used like any .WIN style file, but is only meant for data transfer applications, don’t use it as your main drive. There are two kind of QubIDE image formats, one with big endian and and one with little endian byte order. QPC automatically recognizes the format and adjusts all read/write calls accordingly.

The existing QPC_HOSTOS function was extended, previously it could only differentiate between Windows 95 and Windows NT style operating systems. Now it will return these values:

Also there are two new Basic commands, QPC_FLASHBUTTON and QPC_HASFOCUS. HASFOCUS can be used to check if QPC currently has the input focus. If not FLASHBUTTON can be used to flash the taskbar button to get the attention of the user.

The AYSOUND driver to output FM music can now drive several chips with a single channel. While previously AYSOUND1 already opened a channel to the first chip and AYSOUND2 opened a channel to the second, AYSOUND3 now opens a channel to both chips. In this case the data blocks send to the channel must contain the register data of both chips one after the other. Also, the SOUND basic command has been renamed to AY_SOUND in order not to clash with the Simon N Goodwin’s SOUND device.

Finally, SMSQ/E v3.38 also contains Alain Haoui’s work of implementing index drawing in WMAN (index in the sense of the “A”..”Z” columns and “1”..”9″ rows in Excel), a function that has been part of the WMAN API documentation for 30 years but which was never actually implemented. Details can be found in Wolfgang’s new QPtr manual, along with a few examples.

Links

Get QPC2 here
Get SMSQ/E v3.38 for other platforms here
QPtr manual and WMAN examples