News

While this paged is called ``news", it does not intend to reproduce the ProWesS version report. It may also include some of those items when they are really significant (large changes, or major improvements), but normally contains other ProWesS related news items.

QPC - QXL - Q40 high colour

The newest release works on all current systems in high colour mode. A bug which caused some problems on the Q40 (and the others) has been fixed. Thanks to Marcel Kilgus for helping on this one.

Q40

There now is a ProWesS version which runs perfectly on the Q40, including support for the 16 bit colours which are available on the Q40. You do need to have SMSQ/E 2.95 or higher.

Paragraph

Some time ago, François Lanciault announced that he is working on a new wordprocessor for the QL, based on ProWesS. Now this is available for download. The first version can be used for free, though you are invited to pay a registration fee in which case you can get the full version for free when it is finished. Please read the readme_first and register_txt files which are part of the archive.

Paragraph is a very powerful system. This can easily be seen, just look at the demonstration page which is part of the package. Pages can include pictures and tables. You can use all the fonts you like and all that in any colour. The page can be split up in several frames, allowing the use of columns etc. A very complete package indeed!

Small warning, you do need a pretty recent version of ProWesS to be able to run paragraph, therefore, we have now made the update available for download.

The original version had some teething problems, but we have now reached v1.03 and the biggest problems are now solved. This is really the time to have a look at this exciting program.

Empty ProWesS windows ?

Unfortunately, we recently released a ProWesS update which resulted on some machines in ``empty box syndrome" (as Roy Wood called it). This was caused by a problem with the updated QVME_pfd file (it includes some changes for the next version of ProWesS). I have never been able to reproduce the problem, but I have (by shear coincidence) been able to fix the problem. You can download the fixed version here.

Test colour printer drivers

Here are some test colour printer drivers. If you have a BJ colour driver or a DeskJet colour driver, please download the zip file and try the driver. The zip file also includes a new mono_pfd file. This is necessary for the DeskJet500c_pfd driver. The difference between the DeskJet500c and DeskJet500d drivers are that the first only uses colours, and the second also uses black. Try to print a page which included colour. This can be done in the ProWesS reader, when a colourful picture is displayed. Please let me know if they work or not...

displaying GIF files in the ProWesS reader

It is now possible to display GIF files in the ProWesS reader. There is now a picture driver which can display GIF images. When this driver is loaded, the ProWesS reader will recognize them. The driver is available here. Please do also read the comments at the start of the source file.

This driver could be written as it appears that the LZW patents owned by Unisys and IBM do not apply to decompression. This is mentioned by the FSF (Free Software Foundation). Read here for more details.

Some extra LINEdesign drivers

We have produced a new set of printer drivers specifically to be used in LINEdesign. While LINEdesign doesn't really support colours, these drivers already allow you to produce colour output using LINEdesign. Some of they gray shades you can use are interpreted by these drivers as real colours. This way, you can already use 18 colours in your pages. The colours are selected using the shades 1,7,11,17,21,..,87. The zip file also contains a test page which displays all the available colours and some of the remaining gray shades.

Currently there is only one driver which supports this (Epson Stylus colour), but as soon as the other colour drivers which are currently being tested (BJ colour and Deskjet colour) are reported to work, special versions with colour replacement will also be produced for these.

PWfile

A new file management program has been released (by PROGS). The capabilities include all the common commands (like copy, delete, backup, rename, move, FileInfo link, copy new, create sub directory and format). You can choose whether subdirectories have to be taken into account when doing these actions. When copying, the file data is always preserved. If you copy a file to an MS-DOS medium, then the filename is automatically truncated to the 8+3 filename limit as usual on these devices. The underscore which separates the extension is automatically changed to a dot when necessary.

When you indicate a file, you can see the file statistics. When several files are indicated, you also see the total space these files take on the device. Similar to the option in the ProWesS file select window, there is also the option to make sure that files (not) ending in a certain (list of) extensions are considered for the actions. As any proper ProWesS application, the program includes an online manual and easy installation.

Colour screen drivers

At the show in Eindhoven, Tony Tebby unfolded some of his plans for the new screen drivers which will support more colours. These new screen drivers should become available in v3.00 of SMSQ/E. The new drivers will be very different from the current drivers (although backward compatibility should not be a problem). The system will include some kind of framework in which a window manager should be easier than it was before. The framework is very powerful and flexible, however it will be unusable without lot's of extra software which is plugged in. Tony Tebby has allowed me to have a look at the preliminary design documentation and I will make sure that ProWesS runs in this new framework as soon as I can after the release. As a whole, it will change how everything is done (partly eliminating PROforma and greatly enhancing the capabilities of ProWesS). While I cannot guarantee that ProWesS types will be compatible after the change, programs which use ProWesS should not be affected. In a whole, these new developments should make sure that the window manager should at least be equivalent to some of the better accepted window managers as the one used in Windows 95.

Your news ??

If you have any news you think should be added here, tell me about it.