Hating on my Q68...
Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 11:04 pm
[This is not a criticism of the Q68 which is, generally, a fine piece of hardware. This is a bitch about QL windowing systems. I know some of the original authors come here and may read my words. Sorry if I offend you. You did great work in the late 80s and early 90s. It just didn't stand up to time very well. It's unfathomable. This is a rewording of a private email I sent to Derek. Derek has done fine work and this isn't a criticism of him either.]
I'd like to tell you a little background so you understand where I am coming from. It'll be five minutes of your time, but it'll help you understand a LOT of returning QLers and also old farts like me. We're a huge part of the QL mindset and we're not catered for.
We got a QL before WIMPs were a thing. We learned the QL paradigm of windows as channels. QRAM came along, and we either tried it and hated it, or ignored it. In my case I had seen but not used a WIMP system on an Amiga, and QRAM was so clunky it was just unusable. Everything was quicker at the good old prompt. We probably skipped the later QL windows systems, or tried them and found them immediately hostile compared to what we were used to. In my case, RiscOS. Then we get to now. I'm a 20 year Mac user. QLE and the other one - I load them up and poke around and literally hardly any of it makes sense. I read the manual, and just end up repeatedly going "well, that's stupid! That's archaic. Really?" So the choice is 25-30 year old windowing systems that haven't really improved at all or the familiar old blinking cursor in #0. We go there and we're at home and it's familiar.
I can't quickly function in QLE or "the other one" (my brain can't even commit the name of it to memory it's so uncomfortable) as I can't navigate. I can't navigate in part because everything was named before there was a naming convention, so everything just goes to random and unexpected places or does unpredictable things. EG: Oh look, there's an analog clock in the bottom right corner. How do I get rid of it? *pokes around for literally 30 minutes* *googles 'QL/E manual'* Oh well, I guess the clock can stay.
*reboots and chooses SBASIC, stretches and relaxes in familiar territory, ahh bliss, sips virtual martini of a "hello world" BASIC program*
I have and read the Q68 manual. Nice primer and guide to the Q68-specifics. Nice hardware. I have and read the SMSQ/E manual, which is how I knew after refreshing my memory how to change the keyboard. Prior to this I used SMSQ/E in Q-emulator for about 25 minutes one time, saw no quickly discernible improvements over Minerva for my uses and went back to that.
It's a flaw of the QL and its community. That they will suffer through these terrible, terrible desktop systems at all, with minor incremental improvements but never addressing the basic problems. That they will suffer through archaic filing systems that hugely restrict the storing of big amounts of data. It's a crapfest. We can produce the most amazing hardware to run this noise on, but in 2018 people just expect better,. They fire up QL/E and... yeah... no. Unless it's already familiar territory, it just gives a first impression of garbage to the uninitiated.
If there's a manual I have missed despite googling and searching QL Forum..... Also, learning from a manual written by someone intimately familiar with a system is very different and inferior to being shown something by someone sat beside you, which is how most people got their first experience of these new things way back in the day.
I now have a couple of SD cards - one I can keep as a master, and one I can strip all this crap out and get it down to a system that works for me. That can become a secondary master and I can daily-use a clone of that.
I don't know how Derek had the patience to do it, but kudos to him. It's a ridiculous system but he somehow found a way to make most of the people happy most of the time. I thank him for his work.
But wow, QL desktops are stuck in the past!
So yes, I'm now officially a grumpy old man.
The Q68 hardware is generally very good. I think the two in one PS/2 port is less than optimal, but it works flawlessly and is cleanly designed. It is an ideal machine for the returning QLer.
I'd like to tell you a little background so you understand where I am coming from. It'll be five minutes of your time, but it'll help you understand a LOT of returning QLers and also old farts like me. We're a huge part of the QL mindset and we're not catered for.
We got a QL before WIMPs were a thing. We learned the QL paradigm of windows as channels. QRAM came along, and we either tried it and hated it, or ignored it. In my case I had seen but not used a WIMP system on an Amiga, and QRAM was so clunky it was just unusable. Everything was quicker at the good old prompt. We probably skipped the later QL windows systems, or tried them and found them immediately hostile compared to what we were used to. In my case, RiscOS. Then we get to now. I'm a 20 year Mac user. QLE and the other one - I load them up and poke around and literally hardly any of it makes sense. I read the manual, and just end up repeatedly going "well, that's stupid! That's archaic. Really?" So the choice is 25-30 year old windowing systems that haven't really improved at all or the familiar old blinking cursor in #0. We go there and we're at home and it's familiar.
I can't quickly function in QLE or "the other one" (my brain can't even commit the name of it to memory it's so uncomfortable) as I can't navigate. I can't navigate in part because everything was named before there was a naming convention, so everything just goes to random and unexpected places or does unpredictable things. EG: Oh look, there's an analog clock in the bottom right corner. How do I get rid of it? *pokes around for literally 30 minutes* *googles 'QL/E manual'* Oh well, I guess the clock can stay.
*reboots and chooses SBASIC, stretches and relaxes in familiar territory, ahh bliss, sips virtual martini of a "hello world" BASIC program*
I have and read the Q68 manual. Nice primer and guide to the Q68-specifics. Nice hardware. I have and read the SMSQ/E manual, which is how I knew after refreshing my memory how to change the keyboard. Prior to this I used SMSQ/E in Q-emulator for about 25 minutes one time, saw no quickly discernible improvements over Minerva for my uses and went back to that.
It's a flaw of the QL and its community. That they will suffer through these terrible, terrible desktop systems at all, with minor incremental improvements but never addressing the basic problems. That they will suffer through archaic filing systems that hugely restrict the storing of big amounts of data. It's a crapfest. We can produce the most amazing hardware to run this noise on, but in 2018 people just expect better,. They fire up QL/E and... yeah... no. Unless it's already familiar territory, it just gives a first impression of garbage to the uninitiated.
If there's a manual I have missed despite googling and searching QL Forum..... Also, learning from a manual written by someone intimately familiar with a system is very different and inferior to being shown something by someone sat beside you, which is how most people got their first experience of these new things way back in the day.
I now have a couple of SD cards - one I can keep as a master, and one I can strip all this crap out and get it down to a system that works for me. That can become a secondary master and I can daily-use a clone of that.
I don't know how Derek had the patience to do it, but kudos to him. It's a ridiculous system but he somehow found a way to make most of the people happy most of the time. I thank him for his work.
But wow, QL desktops are stuck in the past!
So yes, I'm now officially a grumpy old man.
The Q68 hardware is generally very good. I think the two in one PS/2 port is less than optimal, but it works flawlessly and is cleanly designed. It is an ideal machine for the returning QLer.